ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A group seeking to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting and open primary system says it has gathered enough signatures to put the repeal question on the 2026 ballot.

The group formed after the 2024 election, when a similar effort narrowly failed to pass.

It began gathering signatures in February, looking to collect more than 34,000 signatures from three-quarters of state House districts.

Supporters of the repeal effort now say they have gathered more than 48,000 signatures. Once they’re submitted to the Division of Elections, state workers will review the signatures to ensure they come from registered Alaska voters, were collected according to state laws, and meet the geographic distribution requirements. If approved by the state Division of Elections, the repeal question will appear on the 2026 ballot.

The petition was formed by former state Rep. Ken McCarty, an Eagle River Republican, along with Republican candidate for governor Bernadette Wilson and Judy Eledge, president of the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club.

Ahead of submitting their petition to the Division of Elections for verification, a group of repeal supporters gathered in an Anchorage parking lot to celebrate the milestone. Among the group were McCarty, Eledge, Alaska GOP Chair Carmela Warfield and Bethany Marcum, a former Americans for Prosperity-Alaska director who has taken a leading role in orchestrating the repeal effort.

The roughly two dozen supporters marched across a parking lot to the Division of Elections, following a dump truck festooned with a hand-painted “dump RCV” sign, while blasting the “Rocky” theme song from a portable speaker. At the state office’s doorstep, the truck ceremonially dropped a pile of empty cardboard boxes. The signature booklets were delivered later in the day.

While the effort so far has been led and orchestrated by Republican politicians and activists, McCarty said he did not want it to be perceived as partisan. McCarty himself lost a state Senate race last year to a more moderate Republican, Sen. Kelly Merrick of Eagle River.

Alaska voters approved ranked choice voting and open primaries by a small margin through a ballot measure in 2020.

The voting method has since been used in state and federal elections. It has been celebrated by some elected Alaska politicians who say it favors moderate candidates more likely to work across the aisle. But conservative Republicans have largely decried the election reform, warning that it makes it harder for farther-right GOP members to win elections, and reduces the power of the GOP to pick its own candidates through a closed primary system.

A group funding the repeal effort had raised more than $247,000 by early October. Nearly three-quarters of its funding — $181,000 — came from Aurora Action Network, a political action committee registered with the Federal Election Commission.

The Aurora Action Network formed on June 6. Later that month, it began giving money to the repeal effort. According to federal reports covering June, the committee is funded by Damien Stella, an Alaska engineering consultant, and Michael Rydin, a Texas political activist who has donated large sums to conservative causes.

Most of the group’s spending has gone to Upward LLC, a Florida-based signature gathering company.

Marcum said Thursday that 65% of the petition signatures were gathered by volunteers. The remainder were gathered by paid workers who traveled to rural parts of the state where the group did not find volunteers.

Already, a group called Protect Alaska’s Elections has registered its intent with the state to spend money to defend Alaska’s election system. In 2024, a similar group opposing the previous repeal initiative spent $15 million on a campaign in defense of open primaries and ranked choice voting.

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