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The historic decision last month by the voters of Alaska to send Mary Peltola to the U.S. Congress has lessons for Hawaii.

The Democrat, in the 49th state, defeated two Republicans in a special election to fill the term of the late Congressman Don Young. One of the GOP candidates was Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and mayor as well as John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election.

It was held through a process known as ranked choice voting that allows voters to rank — first, second, third and so on — the candidates in a race. The first round of counting will determine if a candidate received 50% of the vote plus one more vote, allowing them to win the contest outright. If that does not happen, the candidate with the fewest votes gets eliminated.

“If you voted for that candidate, your vote goes to your next choice and you still have a say in who wins,” on the Alaska Division of Elections website explains. “If your first choice candidate was not eliminated, your vote stays with them. Votes are counted again. This keeps happening in rounds until two candidates are left and the one with the most votes wins.”

I bring this up because Hawaii is set to install ranked choice voting beginning in January under legislation signed into law by Gov. David Ige this summer. It’s an important step forward in possibly leveling the playing field and picking consensus candidates in a state that is dominated by one political party.

Common Cause Hawaii, League of Women Voters of Hawaii and the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs championed , which was crafted by Sens. Karl Rhoads, Gil Keith-Agaran and Chris Lee.

But RCV in Hawaii will only apply to special elections for federal office and for vacant county council seats, which don’t happen all that often. My hope is that the 50th state will look north to expand RCV to include more races.

Thanks to a ballot initiative approved in 2020, Alaska is now the first state to use RCV for all state and federal races — president, Congress, governor and lieutenant governor, and state House and Senate.

“We are the first and only jurisdiction to do so,” says Tiffany Montemayor, public relations manager for the Alaska Division of Elections.

It will include a rematch in November for a full two-year term between Peltola, Palin and Nick Begich III, the lowest vote-getter in the Aug. 16 special election.

Ranked Choice Voting, Alaska Style

The Peltola election received national headlines because it not only featured the embarrassing loss for Palin but also represented a Democratic pickup in the tightly divided U.S. House.

She’s also the first Democrat elected to the House from Alaska since 1970, and the first Alaska-born and Alaska Native in Congress. Peltola is Yup’ik and grew up on the Kuskokwim River.

Not surprisingly, Peltola that she thinks RCV works just fine while Palin — whose campaign was shocked by the loss and described RCV — is demanding Begich, a Republican, drop out of the general. He says he won’t and is calling Palin “a quitter,” arguing that RCV shows voters have soured on her.

Meanwhile, fact-checkers from Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a Republican, who claimed, “60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion — which disenfranchises voters — a Democrat ‘won.’”

It is true that Palin in the first round received 30.9% of the votes to 27.8% for Begich and 39.7% for Peltola. But enough Begich voters made Peltola and not Palin — one of the most polarizing politicians in recent memory — their second choice on the ballot. In the final count, released Aug. 31, it was 51.5% for Peltola versus 48.5% for Palin.

Supporters of RCV say what it really reveals is that most Alaska voters found the system to be . Another takeaway is that Republicans need to put forward more who can attract broader support statewide.

Hawaii Politics Could Benefit

The Hawaii State Elections Office would be well advised to explain how RCV will work. A good place to start is to follow what the Alaska Division of Elections .

It is simple to follow and includes very helpful illustrations of what a RCV ballot looks like, a brief instructional video, translations into Spanish and seven indigenous languages and a list of tips and “mistakes to avoid.”

Here’s another lesson from Alaska to Hawaii, this one to the candidates themselves along with their backers: be kind.

While Peltola was a model of decorum, , “In the run-up to the election, Palin and Begich traded barbed comments in an attempt to sway Republican voters toward their side. Observers say that may have been counterproductive, with Palin’s comments alienating the Begich supporters she needed to win.”

I do hope that Hawaii lawmakers will seriously consider expanding RCV here. The enabling legislation explains that it “has been used effectively in the United States and around the world” including in Alaska, Maine, New York City, Australia, Ireland, Malta, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, and Scotland.

The bill also points out that Hawaii’s voting systems include optical scanners that “can process ranked-choice voting with little or no difficulty.”

Think how these recent Hawaii elections — some special, most of them not, all of them important — might have turned out differently if RCV has been instituted:

• In a 2002 special election to fill the remainder of the term of the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink, fellow Democrat Ed Case won with a plurality of votes cast in a contest that featured Mink’s widower, John, Republican John Carroll and Whitney Anderson, and more than a dozen other candidates.
• In early 2003, Case again prevailed in the special election for another two-year term, besting Anderson and Carroll again, Democrats Matt Matsunaga and Colleen Hanabusa, Republicans Barbara Marumoto and Bob McDermott, and Frank Fasi, who ran as a Republican. More than 30 other people were also on the ballot, some running as Greens, Libertarians, from other third parties or as nonpartisans.
• In the 2006 Democratic primary, Mazie Hirono barely edged Hanabusa for the 2nd Congressional District race that also featured Matsunaga, Clayton Hee, Gary Hooser, Brian Schatz, Ron Menor, Nestor Garcia and two others.
• In a 2010 special election to fill the remainder of former U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie’s term, Republican Charles Djou beat Hanabusa, Case and 11 others with a plurality of the votes.
• In the 2014 Democratic primary, Mark Takai beat Donna Mercado Kim, Stanley Chang, Ikaika Anderson, Will Espero and Joey Manahan with a plurality of the votes cast.
• In that same primary, Schatz narrowly edged Hanabusa in the Senate primary that also featured a third Democrat.
• In the 2018 Democratic primary, Ed Case defeated Kim, Doug Chin, Kaniela Ing, Beth Fukumoto and Ernie Martin with a plurality.
• In the 2022 Democratic primary, Sylvia Luke prevailed over Anderson, Keith Amemiya and Sherry Menor-McNamara, again with a plurality.

I am not making a judgment here on whether the best candidates won or lost those races. But even someone with a casual awareness of Hawaii politics might recognize many of the names listed above and diversity of their views.

Had RCV been in play — had voters had a chance to rank their preferred candidates — it is likely that at least some of these elections might have turned out differently, as well as the history and direction of modern Hawaii.