The Impact of Ranked Choice Voting and Monoculture Governance

Why driving our government towards the middle is not a good idea.

Ranked Choice Voting was sold to Alaskans as a cure for polarization. Supporters claim it gives voters more choice, forces candidates to appeal to broader groups, and leads to more representative outcomes.

In practice, however, RCV often produces the opposite. Instead of empowering voters with clear contrasts, it drives candidates toward a bland middle ground, watering down bold ideas and creating “centrist convergence,” or what I call a nothing-burger government. That is, a system where campaigns and policies all begin to look the same, where the political spectrum narrows into a lukewarm compromise, and where voters searching for real choice often come away frustrated. America and, indeed Alaska, was not built on this.

Why even have two parties? Why even have a government? Let’s just all have a king or territorial governor to tell us what to do.

The mechanism is simple enough. To win under RCV, candidates have to pick up second and third choices from voters whose first choice is eliminated. That means candidates rarely focus on their core beliefs or strong policy stances. Instead, they moderate their message, trim away anything that might offend, and seek to be everyone’s second choice. Over time, this creates a feedback loop: the left tones down progressive ideas to appeal to moderates, the right softens conservative principles to grab crossover votes, and both sides end up sounding exactly alike.

This is the uni-party that both sides are afraid of.

In Australia, where RCV has been used for more than a century, the two major parties long ago converged toward the center, while smaller parties survive only by diluting their positions. So, in practice, RCV does not foster more than two parties, it creates just one, an ideological monoculture of nothingness, a sort of consensus tyranny

This same effect shows up here in the United States. In cities like San Francisco and Minneapolis, ranked elections reward politicians who avoid controversy and build broad but shallow coalitions. Even New York’s mayoral race in 2021, touted as an RCV success, produced a moderate winner not because his vision inspired, but because he was the least objectionable to the widest group.

Is that what we want? Voting for the least objectionable candidate? God help us.

Alaskans saw RCV’s flaws up close in 2022. Nick Begich, who would have won head-to-head against any candidate, was eliminated early because he lacked a strong first-preference bloc; a classic “center squeeze.” In polarized races, RCV can knock out broadly liked candidates if their initial support is thin. A 2025 study confirms this, showing IRV often picks winners 38% further from the average voter’s views than other methods, especially in divided states like Arizona. Instead of reflecting true preferences, RCV distorted Alaska’s outcome, leaving voters with a result most did not fully endorse or even really want.

The problem doesn’t stop there. By prioritizing acceptability over conviction, RCV suppresses big ideas. Policies that might be bold, controversial, or forward-looking, especially in a young state like Alaska; whether health care reform, resource and energy development, or serious fiscal discipline, get sidelined because candidates fear alienating the middle, where their second-choice votes lie. The result is political monoculture, where elections reward candidates who offend the least rather than those who lead with the most. For a state like Alaska, facing real challenges from resource development to education to infrastructure, this is dangerous. We cannot afford a system that punishes bold forward-thinking leadership and replaces it with safe centrism.

Supporters like to say RCV reduces negative campaigning. That may be true in some races. But reducing negativity is not the same as improving democracy. What we get instead is a narrowing of debate, a stifling of ideological diversity, and elections that leave voters less inspired. Recent studies back this up, showing RCV does not change the ideological composition of local governments or improve fiscal outcomes. In many cases, it just rearranges the path to a predetermined centrist result of a homogenous government that might be acceptable to all but is satisfactory to none.

Alaska deserves better. We deserve elections where candidates stand up for their beliefs, where voters get a real clear choice, and where strong ideas can be debated openly rather than diluted for the sake of second-choice computer algorithms. RCV has not delivered on its promises, and its tendency to breed centrist sameness is a warning sign a young state like Alaska cannot ignore.

At the end of the day, democracy is about representation and choice. If every candidate sounds the same, then voters are not truly being represented. Ranked Choice Voting may sound like reform, but in practice it risks locking us into a political system of sameness and homogeneity, where strong voices and bold, creative ideas are silenced and the middle of the road becomes the only road. That may serve the interests of incumbents and special interests, but it does not serve Alaskans.

Who is John Galt, anyway?