Democrats’ ‘Decoy Dan’ should spell the end of ranked choice voting

The Democratic Party claims to defend democracy, but in Alaska, its operatives have been busy cheating the electorate by recruiting a decoy candidate to confuse voters. They deny involvement but have been caught red-handed. Their effort to put a second Dan Sullivan on this year’s Senate ballot exposes the cynicism behind their pro-democracy rhetoric and their practice of turning elections into efforts to con voters. If anything good comes from this deception, let it be the swift and deserved demise of Alaska’s ranked choice voting system and an end to efforts to export it nationwide.Reporting published Wednesday revealed that aides to Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola worked with campaign lawyers and senior staff at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to recruit candidates who could siphon support from Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK). The effort included searching Alaska’s voter rolls for residents named Dan Sullivan and recruiting a retired teacher with that name, who registered as a Republican shortly before entering the race. Peltola’s former campaign manager said the candidate knew about the operation, although she did not directly orchestrate it.Alaska’s ranked choice election system gave this deception a route to the November ballot. Instead of holding separate party primaries that select one nominee apiece, Alaska advances the top four candidates from a single primary to a ranked choice general election. Thus, the decoy Sullivan did not need to defeat the incumbent to advance alongside him. Defenders of ranked choice voting argue that voters can protect themselves by ranking both Sullivans. But a voter who mistakenly selects the decoy and ranks nobody else will see his ballot stop counting when that candidate is eliminated. The system’s protection against this maneuver depends on voters recognizing the deception and knowing how to guard against it.Democrats claim they support the principle of counting every vote — it’s what they say when they try to bend election laws and voting hours in other circumstances. But the ranked choice voting system they keep pushing in jurisdictions across the country does the opposite. In Oakland, California’s 2022 mayoral election, for example, more than 12,000 ballots were stopped from being counted before the final round because they contained no usable ranking for either remaining candidate.Sheng Thao, the corrupt establishment candidate backed by government unions, consequently won a supposed majority with the support of only about 45% of the original electorate, overtaking Loren Taylor, who led in first-choice votes. Those excluded Oakland voters participated in the election, but their ballots no longer counted when the winner was selected. Ranked choice voting had served the establishment Democratic Party’s purpose, though, manufacturing a victory for its preferred candidate even though that candidate was not supported by even a plurality of the voters.Democracy requires fair, simple, and transparent rules to build trust in the results. Every voting policy that complicates, delays, and obscures the process undermines confidence in the outcome and the legitimacy of the system.END THE U VISA FRAUD FACTORYDemocrats keep pushing voting policies that add complications, delays, and obscurity: automatically mailing ballots to every registered voter, accepting ballots that arrive after Election Day, and replacing straightforward elections with multiple rounds of ranked choice tabulation. These policies introduce additional steps for verifying, receiving, and reallocating votes, stretching the process beyond Election Day and making the count harder for voters to follow. Voters deserve rules that make casting a ballot convenient and determining the winner straightforward. They should not need to master an elaborate ranking system to protect themselves from a decoy candidate or wait weeks to learn who will represent them. Elections are often referred to as “races,” and they should be more like real races — the candidate with the most votes in the count should be declared the winner.There is no evidence that ranked choice voting has improved governance, increased participation, or increased faith in election results in any of the jurisdictions where it has been implemented. Alaska’s “Decoy Dan” debacle should be a warning to every state: Stop expanding ranked choice voting and start repealing it.