Ballot Measure 2: repeal open primaries and ranked-choice voting

What a vote means

A yes vote

Party primaries and single-choice general elections return, and the 2020 campaign finance limits and disclosure rules are repealed.

A no vote

Alaska keeps the open top-four primary, ranked-choice general elections and the 2020 campaign finance rules.

In full

In 2020 Alaska voters narrowly approved Ballot Measure 2, which replaced party primaries with a single open primary advancing the top four candidates, replaced the general election with ranked-choice voting, and added a set of campaign finance disclosure rules. This initiative would undo all three ^[2]. It is two reforms in one question. The election half brings back party primaries — voters choosing a party's ballot and voting only for candidates on it — and single-choice general elections decided by whoever has the most votes, along with party petitions and special runoff elections. Governor and lieutenant governor would run separately in primaries and together in November ^[2]. The campaign finance half is the part the official summary had to be rewritten to mention. The act would remove the limits on donations to joint governor and lieutenant governor campaigns, and “would remove limits and disclosure rules under current law, including for digital ads, out-of-state donations, undisclosed donations, and the true source of donations”, change what counts as a campaign expenditure, and remove some fines ^[2]. The Alaska Supreme Court ordered that summary changed five weeks before the election: the Attorney General's Aug. 28, 2026 letter adds a sentence “in accordance with the Alaska Supreme Court's August 27, 2026 order in the appeal brought by Catherine Giessel et al. and Repeal Now” ^[7].

On the ballot

What it would change

• Repeals the open primary. Alaska's present system puts all candidates on one primary ballot and advances the top four; the act would “get rid of open primary elections, where all candidates appear on one ballot” ^[2]
• Repeals ranked-choice voting in general elections, replacing it with “single-choice general elections” where “the candidate with the most votes would win” ^[2]
• Restores party primaries: “voters would choose a party's ballot, unless prohibited by the party's bylaws. They would only vote for candidates on that ballot. The winning candidate from each primary would be the party's nominee” ^[2]
• Restores the surrounding machinery: “Party petitions, special runoff elections, and other processes would return” ^[2]
• Changes how the governor's ticket is chosen: “Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor would run separately in political party primaries and then together in the general election” ^[2]
• On the money side, repeals campaign finance rules added by the 2020 measure. It “would remove the limits on donations to joint campaigns for governor and lieutenant governor” ^[2]
• And it “would remove limits and disclosure rules under current law, including for digital ads, out-of-state donations, undisclosed donations, and the true source of donations” ^[2]
• It “would change the meaning of a campaign expenditure and remove some fines” ^[2]
• The Alaska Public Offices Commission describes the same effect from the regulator's side: the initiative “would repeal certain reporting requirements for persons engaged in independent expenditure activities and their contributors; and certain identifier requirements for political communications” ^[8]
• The sponsors' own title names all three strands: “An Act to repeal a nonpartisan and open top four Primary election system and ranked-choice General election system; and to reestablish a partisan political Primary and change necessary and related appointment procedures; reestablish special runoff elections; and repeal and amend independent expenditure group requirements” ^[6]
• The full text of the initiative is the sponsors' proposed bill, posted by the Division of Elections as a scanned PDF with no text layer; it could not be read for this profile, so every description above comes from the Attorney General's official summary, the sponsors' title and the Commission's cost statement (see what we could not find) ^[6]

When it would start

• No effective date appears in the ballot summary ^[2]
• Alaska's Division of Elections costs the change as one needing lead time rather than one taking effect at once: it budgets $2,500,000 for “a public education campaign … to inform candidates, voters, and election workers of the changes to the primary and general election processes” ^[8]
• No effective-date provision was found: the initiative's own text could not be read, and when an approved Alaska initiative takes effect was not established from any official source read here (see what we could not find)

If it passes

• Open top-four primaries and ranked-choice general elections end. Party primaries, single-choice general elections, party petitions and special runoff elections return, governor and lieutenant governor run separately in primaries and together in November, and the campaign finance limits and disclosure rules added in 2020 — including those on digital ads, out-of-state donations, undisclosed donations and the true source of donations — are repealed ^[2]

If it fails

• Alaska keeps its open top-four primary, ranked-choice general elections, and the campaign finance limits and disclosure rules added by the 2020 ballot measure ^[2]

What it would cost

• Alaska requires a statement of costs for every initiative, and this one is the most expensive on the ballot: $2,630,958 in total ^[8]
• By agency: Alaska Public Offices Commission $6,975; Office of the Lieutenant Governor $15,000; Office of the Lieutenant Governor – Division of Elections $2,608,983 ^[8]
• The largest single line is voter education — $2,500,000 — because “a public education campaign will need to take place to inform candidates, voters, and election workers of the changes to the primary and general election processes” ^[8]
• The rest of the Division's figure: personal services $81,626, printing services $1,505, language assistance $25,852 ^[8]
• The Commission's $6,975 covers about 60 programming hours to change its online filing system (~$3,975) and about 30 staff hours to revise and adopt regulations (~$3,000) ^[8]
• The Lieutenant Governor's $15,000 is travel and legislative information office services for the public hearings the statute requires ^[8]
• The statement's own caveat is important: the Division's estimate excludes “legal costs to the state and the costs to the state of any challenge to the validity of the petition” — and this petition was litigated to the Supreme Court over its ballot summary ^[7][8]
• No estimate was published of any ongoing saving or cost from running party primaries and single-choice elections instead of the present system

How it got on the ballot

• By citizens' petition. The petition application was filed on Dec. 26, 2024, booklets were issued on March 11, 2025, and the completed booklets were filed with the Division of Elections on Nov. 6, 2025 — more than four months before the filing deadline of March 10, 2026 ^[6]
• The primary sponsors are Ken McCarty, Judy Eledge and Bernadette Wilson ^[6]
• The signature test was cleared with room to spare: 34,098 signatures were required, and of 48,295 submitted, 42,837 qualified ^[9]
• Of the 5,458 rejected, the largest categories were 3,141 duplicate signatures and 1,398 from people not registered to vote ^[9]
• Then the ballot wording went to court. The Attorney General's letter of Aug. 28, 2026 proposes new language “in accordance with the Alaska Supreme Court's August 27, 2026 order in the appeal brought by Catherine Giessel et al. and Repeal Now (S-19922/S-19931)” ^[7]
• What the court required was one sentence: the letter describes “a summary with one added sentence that now totals 223 words” ^[7]
• The Attorney General also discloses that the summary falls short of a statutory readability standard: “The readability score is 54.07 under the formula described in AS 15.80.005(c). This is below the target score of 60, but the Alaska Supreme Court has upheld ballot summaries with lower scores”, citing Pebble Partnership v. Parnell, 215 P.3d 1064, 1082–84 (Alaska 2009) ^[7]
• The letter was signed for Acting Attorney General Cori Mills ^[7]
• Alaska then held the hearings its law requires. Under AS 15.45.195 the Lieutenant Governor must hold at least two public hearings in each judicial district, and “Each public hearing under this section shall include the written or oral testimony of one supporter and one opponent of the initiative” ^[8]. Hearings on this measure were held on July 27 and Aug. 5, 2026, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. ^[3]
• The Division of Elections lists the measure's status as “Will appear on General Election ballot”, and the official ballot numbers it Ballot Measure No. 2 ^[1][2]

What came before

• This is the third Alaska election in a row to turn on the 2020 measure. It created the system; a 2024 initiative to repeal it reached the ballot and this one followed ^[1]
• The 2020 measure did two things at once, and so does this one — which is why the official summary has to cover both elections and campaign finance in 223 words ^[2][7]
• Alaska is the only state using a top-four open primary with ranked-choice general elections, so the question is also about whether that experiment continues ^[2]
• Alaska's initiative process requires a statement of costs from every affected agency before the measure reaches voters, which is why the $2.6 million figure is on the public record rather than a campaign estimate ^[8]
• The measure shares the ballot with Ballot Measure No. 3, a separate citizenship initiative. A third measure, Ballot Measure No. 1 (23RCF2, restoring campaign contribution limits), was decided at the Aug. 18, 2026 primary and is not on this ballot ^[1]

Who is paying for the campaign

Totals reported by committees formed for this measure. They are not the final figures, and a committee that campaigns on more than one measure is counted on each.

Alaska ballot proposition groups register with the Alaska Public Offices Commission and state on that registration whether they support or oppose, and which measure ^[4]. The figures below are each group's “campaign income total” and “campaign expense total” as reported on its Thirty Day Report for the general election, covering everything raised and spent through Oct. 2, 2026 ^[5]. A total is the group's whole campaign, not its spending on this measure alone, and money spent after Oct. 2 is not in it.

What each side says

Other people's words and claims, not ours, each with the page it came from. Where we found no organised campaign on a side, the page says so rather than inventing one.

Questions worth asking

• This is two reforms in one question. If you want to keep ranked-choice voting but repeal the disclosure rules — or the reverse — there is no way to split your vote. Should there be?
• The Attorney General says the summary scores 54.07 on readability against a statutory target of 60. If the official summary of a 223-word question is harder to read than the law intends, what does a voter rely on?
• The Alaska Supreme Court ordered one sentence added five weeks before the election. What was missing from the summary before that, and had ballots already been printed?
• “Remove limits and disclosure rules … including for digital ads, out-of-state donations, undisclosed donations, and the true source of donations.” Which specific rules go, and what replaces them?
• The state budgets $2.5 million to teach voters and election workers a new system. Who pays that, and when?
• Repealing ranked choice also brings back special runoff elections. How many extra elections would that mean, and at what cost?
• The opposition has raised nearly four times what both supporting groups have. Where is the money on each side coming from — and would this measure make that harder to find out?
• Alaska Ballot Fund registers as supporting “Protecting Alaska's Elections” without naming a measure. What is it spending on?
• The initiative's own full text could not be read for this profile, only the Attorney General's summary of it. What else is in the bill?

What we could not find

• The initiative's own text — the sponsors' proposed bill — is posted by the Division of Elections as a scanned PDF with no text layer and could not be read. Everything above describing what the act would do comes from the Attorney General's official ballot summary, the sponsors' title, and the Public Offices Commission's cost statement. The specific statutes the act would repeal or amend are therefore not listed here.
• The Attorney General's opinion on the petition application (AGO No. 2025200007) is likewise a scan with no text layer and was not read.
• The Alaska Supreme Court's Aug. 27, 2026 order in S-19922/S-19931, and the briefs of Catherine Giessel et al. and Repeal Now, were not read. What each side argued about the ballot summary, and what the court held, is not reported above — only what the Attorney General's letter says the order required.
• The sentence the court required to be added is not identified: the Attorney General's letter gives the new summary in full and says it adds one sentence, but does not mark which.
• The official statements of support and opposition given at the Lieutenant Governor's hearings were not published in a readable form on the Division of Elections' website at the time of this research, so neither side's own case is quoted.
• Alaska's Official Election Pamphlet for the 2026 general election, which the cost statements say contains a pro statement, a con statement and a neutral summary for each measure, was not located online.
• The campaign finance figures are each group's whole campaign through Oct. 2, 2026, not its spending on this measure, and nothing after Oct. 2 is included. Contributor-level detail was not read.
• Alaska Ballot Fund's registration records support for a subject it calls “Protecting Alaska's Elections” rather than for a numbered measure, so its $100,000 cannot be assigned to either side from the official record.
• When an approved Alaska initiative takes effect was not established.

Sources