Opinion: How did a federal prison inmate get on the ballot in Alaska?

Perhaps no magic trick in recent years could match how Donald Trump’s successful campaign made talk of voter fraud disappear overnight. All the shouts of “stop the steal!” and all the early election claims of irregularities vanished into crickets with abra-cadabra speed as soon as returns went the former president’s way.
That’s almost as astonishing as how a federal prison inmate made his way to the ballot for Congress in Alaska. More on that later.
While many were looking elsewhere on Tuesday, Americans also quietly gave the idea of open non-partisan primaries and ranked-choice voting the boot in five states, and possibly six, once ballots are all counted. This, and the disappearance of election deniers, may be signaling a continuation of the status quo in American elections for a long time to come.
It may also ultimately affect the ranked-choice voting experiment in Utah. A pilot program available to Utah’s municipal elections only, it’s already on life support here after narrowly surviving an attempt to kill it during the last legislative session. It’s set to expire anyway in 2026.
Open primaries, in which anyone can sign up but only a certain number of people, usually the top four, advance to the general election, are not under consideration here. But Alaska is turning into a poster child for both systems.
Its open primaries this year resulted in a federal prison inmate in New York, who never once set foot in Alaska, advancing to the general election — a reversal of the stereotypical politics-to-prison route.
“Ultimately, if I’m elected, I expect to be released immediately at that point,” the inmate, Eric Hafner, told NPR from behind bars. Well, of course. Incarceration affords time to hatch such plots. He’s serving a 20-year sentence for threatening various politicians, police, judges and attorneys, coincidentally.
In Alaska, primaries are open to all comers, with the top four finishers advancing to a ranked-choice general election. Hafner originally finished well out of the top four, with just 0.4% of the vote. But then two people ahead of him dropped out, moving Hafner into fourth place, where a judge ruled he had a right to be.
As I write this, the race for Alaska’s lone House seat looks like it might trigger a ranked-choice runoff, with no candidate topping 50% in the first round. Hafner, who is listed as a Democrat, is last with 1%, but his presence could have an effect on the eventual winner, who currently has 49%.
Under ranked-choice voting, people are asked to rank all candidates on the ballot according to preference. If, after all ballots are counted, no candidate has more than 50% of the first-place votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the second choices of his or her voters are distributed among the rest. This continues in subsequent rounds until someone reaches more than 50%.
Two years ago in Alaska, former governor Sarah Palin lost the race for that congressional seat and quickly blamed ranked-choice voting, which reverberated among many Republicans, including Trump, who indelicately called it “ranked-choice crap voting.”
Not surprisingly, in a separate ballot question this year, Alaskans were asked if they wanted to ditch their open primary ranked-choice system. As I write this, a slight majority is in favor, although the outcome is too close to call. We should pay attention.
These new and unusual voting systems are relevant to Utah because, thanks to changes in campaign laws, more people are showing up on primary ballots by collecting petition signatures.
Utah’s newest senator, John Curtis, won a four-way race for his party’s nomination. He cleared it with more than 50%. But Mike Kennedy, the newest congressman from Utah’s third district, won a five-way primary with considerably less than half the vote.
For now, Utahns seem OK with that, and Kennedy’s decisive general election win, by well over 60% (according to incomplete results), gives him a clear mandate. But what if a multiple-candidate primary someday results in a winner who finishes in the 20th percentile or less? Should the state have a type of runoff provision?
If so, I doubt it would be through ranked-choice voting.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad system, particularly for non-partisan municipal races. It just adds a layer of complexity and another chance to cry foul. People who easily buy claims of fraud won’t be open to most new voting systems.
Today’s opponents of open primaries and ranked-choice voting differ from election deniers. They increasingly seem to be both mainstream Democrats and Republicans. Proponents say this is because the main parties worry about independents rising up.
By the way, voters in Washington, D.C., and four other cities overwhelmingly approved ranked-choice voting for municipal elections this week.
That’s fitting. The idea probably belongs in city elections, at least for now.