Davidson says Murkowski backed ranked choice to dodge a GOP primary

With Alaska’s Nov. 3 election days away, Davidson’s reply ties Murkowski’s ballot-stacking rebuke to the dispute over recruiting a same-name Senate candidate.

John Daniel Davidson accused Sen. Lisa Murkowski of hypocrisy on X on Oct. 28, alleging she helped impose Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system to avoid a Republican primary challenge. His reply challenged her condemnation of ballot-stacking and call for candidates to win on their merits.

In her Oct. 28 X post, Murkowski wrote that ballot-stacking “should have no place in our electoral process.” She called recruiting candidates to manipulate the field and influence voting outcomes “simply wrong” and said Alaskans “deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign”. Murkowski wrote that “what has been revealed is a pattern of lies and coverups and a culture of deception” that “belongs nowhere in our elections or among our elected officials.”

“should have no place in our electoral process.”

Lisa Murkowski

Davidson’s original post appears here.

Alaska Public Media reports that The New York Times described efforts to recruit Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. to draw votes from incumbent Dan S. Sullivan and advantage Democrat Mary Peltola. Alaska’s open primary sends the four highest finishers to the general election, and the reporting says Daniel J. Sullivan received roughly 2% of the August primary vote and qualified for the November ballot¹.

Murkowski, in a statement reported by The Alaska Story, condemned recruiting candidates to influence election outcomes and called on Peltola and her campaign to account for the revelations¹.

The Alaska Story reports that Alaska’s 2020 overhaul paired open primaries with ranked-choice voting in general elections; those rules govern different stages of an election. CNN explains that if no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, voters’ other rankings come into play².

The Alaska Story reports that Murkowski lost the 2010 Republican primary to Joe Miller, then won the general election as a write-in candidate. In 2022, she defeated Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka under ranked-choice voting, ultimately receiving 53% after Democrat Pat Chesbro was eliminated and nearly 30,000 votes were redistributed, the outlet reports³.

Alaska Public Media reported that Peltola’s campaign said it had “no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.” The campaign’s statement did not address whether Peltola herself was involved in recruitment⁴. The Times report says Peltola campaign lawyers and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee were involved in the effort. The DSCC separately said, “The DSCC is not involved with Dan J. Sullivan.”⁵ Former Peltola campaign manager Elisa Rios said, “There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”

Davidson says Murkowski backed ranked choice to dodge a GOP primary

Sources