Alaska’s presidential election allows voters to rank up to eight candidates

A ballot box containing absentee ballots dropped off at Anchorage City Hall is seen on Aug. 19, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Kitchenman/Alaska Beacon)

Alaska’s first ranked choice presidential election will include eight candidates, according to the final roster approved by the Alaska Division of Elections.

Because Alaska’s top-four primary election doesn’t apply to the presidential race, voters will be able to rank all eight options if they choose to do so.

The first ballots for the Nov. 5 general election are already being printed and are scheduled for mailing to international voters starting Friday.

On the front of the ballot are eight options for president:

Democratic candidate Kamala Harris
Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Libertarian Chase Oliver
American Solidarity Party nominee Peter Sonski
Independent Jill Stein
Constitution Party nominee Randall Terry
Republican candidate Donald Trump
Aurora Party nominee Cornel West

Kennedy announced in August that he would be suspending his presidential campaign and that he was endorsing Trump, but his campaign failed to remove his name from Alaska’s ballot after the August primary election.

Nationally, Stein is the Green Party’s presidential candidate; the Green Party of Alaska is unaffiliated with the national Green Party. 

Alaska will be the second state to use ranked choice voting in a presidential election, following Maine’s experience in 2020.

But Maine’s experience is incomplete; its 2020 election didn’t need to use ranked choice tabulation because the winners of that election had at least 50% of the vote.

In Maine, as in Alaska, if a candidate earns more than 50% of the first-choice votes, they win without a need for ranked choice tabulation.

Maine distributes its Electoral College votes by congressional district and by statewide vote. In 2020, Democratic candidate Joe Biden won the statewide vote — worth two Electoral College votes — and one of the state’s congressional districts, while Republican candidate Donald Trump won the other congressional district.

In every one of Alaska’s presidential elections since 1992, the winner of the state has earned more than 50% of the overall vote.   

Four years ago, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump won Alaska’s three Electoral College votes after earning 52.8% of the state’s presidential votes. Democratic candidate Joe Biden had 42.8% of the vote here. 

Four years before that, Trump earned 51.3% of the vote. 

Back in 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot claimed 28.4% of the state’s presidential vote. Eventual winner, and Republican nominee, George H.W. Bush had 39.5% of the state’s vote.

The only other time that a candidate won with less than 50% of the state’s vote was in 1968, when Richard Nixon took 45.3% of the tally. 

Alaska has voted for a Republican presidential candidate in every election since statehood except for 1964, when Democrat Lyndon Johnson won as part of a national landslide.