Assembly effort to switch to ranked choice voting in local elections to continue with public hearing Aug. 18
- Mark Sabbatini
- Aug 5, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 6, 2025
City leaders giving residents another opportunity to weigh in before considering new rules for 2026; change would now apply only to Assembly, not school board races
By Mark Sabbatini
Editor
Switching to ranked choice voting in Juneau’s municipal elections is getting another hearing before the full Assembly on Aug. 18, after members on Monday night amended the proposal to exclude school board races that are already determined using a ranking methodology.
An ordinance implementing local ranked choice voting was introduced at a June 9 Assembly meeting and subsequently referred to a Committee of the Whole meeting on Monday night for further evaluation and possible modification. Juneau would be Alaska’s first municipality to implement the methodology at the municipal level, although Assembly members aren’t planning to vote on adopting the change until this year’s local election is complete.
The proposal was initiated earlier this year by Assembly Member Ella Adkison, who said most Juneau voters have responded favorably to ranked choice voting since it was first used statewide in 2022.
"I think Juneau in general likes having lots of candidates in a race because it means that the person that they feel represents them the most is the person who actually gets onto the Assembly," she said. The current system "doesn’t handle races with many candidates very well because you can have candidates with similar values taking votes from each other — and therefore pressure for candidates that might have similar values to drop out — so that you only have one person that kind of has those values…And I don't think that that incentive to having fewer candidates is good for Juneau."
Assembly members voted 5-3, with Mayor Beth Weldon absent, to advance the ordinance to the Aug. 18 meeting for further consideration. A key issue for some Assembly members opposing the measure was implementing the change administratively rather than letting local voters decide the issue via a ballot measure, or at least weigh in with an advisory vote.
"I think the voters should have the opportunity to weigh on a very important issue affecting our elections," Assembly Member Maureen Hall said.
The issue came up at an Assembly meeting a week ago when two former Juneau municipal clerks, Laurie Sica and Beth McEwen, submitted a joint letter about the proposal. Their letter did not examine the pros and cons of ranked choice voting, but instead asked that it be on a 2026 ballot.
Sica said for the past several years, she has assisted voters in the call center for the Juneau election. She said many voters do not understand or trust the by-mail voting process.
“This year, a large number of people submitted an unsuccessful petition to return to poll-based elections,” Sica said. “Other unsuccessful elections procedure petitions were filed in 2024 and 2023. A change to by-mail voting has taken considerable time and cost to implement and explain to the voters. Voter education is ongoing. Adding one more big change to already frustrated voters could create more problems than it is trying to solve.”
Ranked choice voting asks voters to give a ranking to each candidate in a race, then goes to an "instant runoff" process if no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes. The process involves eliminating the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes and adding the second-choice votes to the remaining candidates, then repeating the process until one candidate has a majority.
The process is straightforward for Assembly and mayoral races in Juneau since voters are selecting a single candidate per race, much like electing a president or member of Congress. However, concern was expressed by some local elected officials about how the process would affect Juneau Board of Education races. In those races there are a set number of seats open — typically three, as is the case this year — and the top finishers in the pool of candidates (four this year) get the open seats.
The Assembly on Monday by a 7-1 vote altered the ordinance to limit ranked choice voting to races electing a single candidate.
Deputy Mayor Greg Smith proposed the Aug. 18 public hearing to allow testimony on the ordinance, but then postpone further consideration of the matter until the Assembly’s Nov. 3 meeting — well after the Oct. 7 municipal election — so residents don’t think the changes being discussed will have any effect on this year’s races. That schedule was adopted 6-2.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306. Juneau Independent Managing Editor Jasz Garrett contributed to this story.
