AK-AL Special election: Peltola wins!

[Хahar 🤔]

If candidates are routinely doing this in AK (finishing Top 4 but dropping out before the general election), that seems like it could be a pretty big problem for the integrity of the Top 4 RCV vote reform. 

What would have happened if Al Gross hadn't dropped out of the special?  It might have resulted in Begich being elected; instead, he won't even make the top 2.  Lot of opportunities for strategic manipulation (e.g. a niche candidate could run just to keep a more moderate candidate out of the Top 4).

Why did Sweeney even run for the full term primary when she only got 5% in the special election primary?

Essentially what you're seeing here is that because strategic voting is so important in an instant-runoff system, candidates are essentially making the decision on behalf of voters by withdrawing. I can't say I saw this specific tactic coming, but it's an obvious consequence of choosing the entirely arbitrary number of four candidates. My guess is that the equilibrium number of general election candidates is probably three (presumably two Republicans and one Democrat, with the fourth dropping out), since in that scenario either Republican could imagine themselves winning should they get to the last round.

In any case, this is an obviously poorly designed system, but I'm skeptical that it'll be changed.

[Хahar 🤔]

Why would either candidate drop out?  The whole RCV system is created to avoid situations where we should have to worry about spoilers and thus there should be no pressure to drop out. 

Instant-runoff voting does not satisfy what Wikipedia (presumably following the academic literature) refers to as the independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion, and is thus still subject to spoiler candidates. It is important to recall here that Gross finished ahead of Peltola. Let's suppose that there are a significant number of Begich–Peltola–Palin–Gross voters. If Gross had stayed in the race and again outpolled Peltola, thereby eliminating her, then in a Palin–Gross final round those voters would have gone to Palin. In a Palin–Peltola final round, they instead go to Peltola.

Instant-runoff systems provide a strong incentive to vote strategically for more "electable" candidates. When candidates drop out in a system like this one, they ensure that voters will effectively have to vote strategically. If Gross viewed himself as less electable and prioritized electing a Democrat, then his choice to drop out has worked exactly as planned.

[Хahar 🤔]

Why would either candidate drop out?  The whole RCV system is created to avoid situations where we should have to worry about spoilers and thus there should be no pressure to drop out. 

Instant-runoff voting does not satisfy what Wikipedia (presumably following the academic literature) refers to as the independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion, and is thus still subject to spoiler candidates. It is important to recall here that Gross finished ahead of Peltola. Let's suppose that there are a significant number of Begich–Peltola–Palin–Gross voters. If Gross had stayed in the race and again outpolled Peltola, thereby eliminating her, then in a Palin–Gross final round those voters would have gone to Palin. In a Palin–Peltola final round, they instead go to Peltola.

Instant-runoff systems provide a strong incentive to vote strategically for more "electable" candidates. When candidates drop out in a system like this one, they ensure that voters will effectively have to vote strategically. If Gross viewed himself as less electable and prioritized electing a Democrat, then his choice to drop out has worked exactly as planned.

It's true that RCV doesn't satisfy IIA.  But almost all single-winner real-world voting systems fail to satisfy IIA, and RCV tends to do better on this than FPTP in the type of real-world situations we are likely to see.

I guess my sense is while Gross dropping out -might- be strategic for the Democratic party (although I'm skeptical there are a nontrivial number of people who rank Begich–Peltola–Palin–Gross), it seems antithetical to the intent of the reform, and contrary to the will of the voters. 

It's like if under the old system the Republican party held a primary where Palin beat Begich, and then the party just decided to cancel the result and make Begich their nominee because he was more "electable".  That might be strategic for the party, but it would be bad for democracy.

I realized after posting that you presumably know everything I said, so apologies if I sounded like I was talking down to you.

I guess where I differ from you is that I don't feel that politics is a game where the participants are bound to operate according to the rules. (I don't mean "game" in a pejorative sense here.) The purpose of Alaska Democrats is not to make sure that the political process operates according to the spirit of the law that was passed; it's to get Democrats elected to enact Democratic policies. To suggest otherwise is holding Alaskan political organizations to a standard that doesn't make sense anywhere else. For instance, in France, every legislative candidate whose vote is more than an eighth of all voters in the constituency advances to the second round, but usually in a three-way race the less electorally advantaged candidate will drop out. I don't think it's anti-democratic in any sense I care about for candidates who do not see a path to victory to remove themselves from consideration.

Obviously, as I've made clear, my opinion of this Alaskan system is quite low. In any case, we have plenty of cases in this  country where candidates drop out after being nominated (leaving the party to choose a successor) or parties choose to nominate candidates at a convention instead of a primary (in a similar manner to how candidates are nominated for office in nearly every other country). To the extent that we have an issue with democracy, I don't think it's that.