https://www.yahoo.com/news/alaska-is...193615285.html
The gist: By voter referendum in 2020 a new voting system passed in Alaska and will be used for the senate race: No primaries. ALL candidates of ALL parties enter the ballot in a primary election in August. The top 4 vote getters will go to official election in November 2022 for the senate seat, using ranked voting.
In the ranked system proposed, candidates are eliminated and the votes that had them go to the next person on the voter's list. Thus, if you voted for 1: A, 2: B, 3:C and 4: D, and A was eliminated, your vote would go to B.
This could be very big for USA. It is a shake-up of the system used for such races in USA that could bring major benefits if implemented in more states.
Benefit A: Gives a slightly better chance to non-big-party candidates. Not enough to seriously threaten bipartisanship, but a move towards the right direction
The main Benefit B: Your voice matters even if your best candidates lose.
Let's assume there would be 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans in the final ballot for Alaska. One Republican is a Trumpeteer, the other a moderate. Which would probably be the case.
Let's assume Democrats lose.
But the votes of the Democrat voters would NOT have been in vain. If most Democrat voters vote for the moderate Republican as #3, they could lock out the Trumpeteer.
With numbers:
Let's assume Democrat A, Democrat B, Republican T (Trumpeteer), Republican M (Moderate).
Let's assume the Democrats get: A: 60K votes, B: 60K votes.
And Republicans get: T: 80K votes and M: 70K votes
Round 1: A is eliminated and the votes for A are split to the candidate A-voters put as their next choice. B: 100K votes, T: 83K votes, M 87K votes.
What that means? It means T now has the least votes from the 3 candidates and is thus eliminated.
Round 2: T is eliminated, votes for T are split to the candidate the T-voters put as their next choice: B: 113K, M: 157K
Sure, the democrats would have to content with their "3rd best" choice but not their worst choice. And while individually T got the most votes, about 30%, he didn't manage to gather 50%+1 so... bye bye.
Benefit 3: Under the new ranked system, it is good strategy to work with the other side!
You would see Republicans walking to democrat voters and say "Please put our guy as #2 instead of that Trumpeteer butthole. That way, even if you don't get your choices, you will at least block out your worst case. "
While Republicans would approach democrats and say "If you don't want CRT taught in schools, don't vote for AOC's mouthpiece, but put our guy as #3."
You have to work with the other side.