The Math That Terrifies Ideological PACs
Let me show you the one reform that makes professional political operatives lose sleep: ranked-choice voting in open primaries. Not because it’s some democracy-saving miracle cure—it’s not. But because it fundamentally breaks the mathematical model that ideological PACs have perfected.
Here’s the dirty secret: In closed primaries with low turnout, you need about 6-8% of eligible voters to win. That’s it. Six percent. That’s not democracy; that’s a rounding error with legislative power.
Ideological PACs have weaponized this math. They know exactly how many extremist voters they need to mobilize. They know exactly how much it costs per vote. $823 in the Craig Blair case. They know exactly which attacks will suppress turnout among moderates while energizing their base. It’s surgical. It’s effective. And it’s destroying governance.
But here’s what happens when you combine open primaries with ranked-choice voting: their entire playbook catches fire.
The Alaska Experiment Nobody Wants You to Understand
Alaska implemented top-four open primaries with RCV in 2022. The political establishment immediately started lying about what happened. Let me give you the actual data:
Primary turnout jumped to 37%—third highest in the nation. Not 12%. Not 15%. Thirty-seven percent. When you let all voters participate regardless of party registration, people actually show up.
The share of uncontested legislative seats got cut in half. When extremists can’t lock up nominations with 6% of voters, actual competition emerges.
Here’s the part that really matters: Conservative Republican Mike Dunleavy won the governorship. Moderate Republican Lisa Murkowski won the Senate seat. Moderate Democrat Mary Peltola won the House seat. Different candidates, different coalitions, same electorate. The system didn’t favor Democrats or Republicans—it favored candidates who could appeal beyond their base.
You know what it didn’t favor? Ideological purity tests backed by outside money.
Why The Opposition Is So Desperate
Since 2024, eleven states have banned RCV. Not studied it. Not piloted it. Banned it outright. West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma—notice a pattern? These are states where primaries are completely captured by ideological PACs.
The Foundation for Government Accountability—one of those think tanks that exists solely to launder billionaire ideology into policy papers—claims RCV creates “fake majorities” by throwing out ballots. This is weapons-grade gaslighting.
Here’s what actually happens: In traditional primaries, if you get 30% in a five-way race, you win with 30%. Period. The other 70% of voters? Their preferences don’t matter. In RCV, those 70% get to say “if not my first choice, then this person.” That’s not throwing out ballots—that’s actually counting what voters want.
But here’s the real tell: The hysteria isn’t about voter confusion or election integrity. Look at who’s funding the anti-RCV campaigns. It’s the same ideological PACs that have captured closed primaries. Make Liberty Win, Stand For Us PAC, Heritage Action—they’re spending millions to ban RCV because they’ve run the numbers.
The 75% Solution
Unite America Institute found something that should be on every reform billboard in America: In open primaries, ideological PAC money is 75% less effective.
Read that again. Three-quarters of their advantage evaporates when all voters can participate.
In closed primaries, backing from 20 ideological PACs boosts vote share by 9.4 percentage points. In open primaries? 2.4 points. That’s the difference between kingmaking and background noise.
Now add RCV to that equation. Suddenly, you can’t win by just mobilizing extremists. You need second-choice votes from your opponent’s supporters. You can’t run scorched-earth negative campaigns because you might need those voters’ second preferences. The entire strategy of division and demonization that PACs have perfected becomes counterproductive.
The West Virginia Warning
West Virginia banned RCV in 2025. You know who pushed hardest for that ban? The same groups that took out Craig Blair and installed their hand-picked replacements. They saw what happened in Alaska. They did the math. They panicked.
The state that desperately needs electoral reform to break the stranglehold of extremist PACs just made that reform illegal. That’s not coincidence. That’s strategy.
Meanwhile, they’re still running those “voter security” campaigns, but what they’re really securing is their mathematical advantage in low-turnout primaries.
The Independent Problem That’s Actually An Opportunity
Twenty-seven million Americans can’t vote in the primaries that actually decide their representation. These aren’t fringe voters—they’re 33% of the electorate, increasingly young, disproportionately veterans. They’re paying $287 million in taxes to fund elections they’re locked out of.
In 85% of districts with closed primaries, the general election is meaningless. The seat is safe. So when ideological PACs capture the primary with 6% of voters, they’ve captured the seat.
Open primaries with RCV don’t just let independents vote—they fundamentally change what kind of candidate can win. When turnout goes from 12% to 30%, when you need broad appeal instead of base mobilization, when you can’t win with just the extremes, different people run. Different people win. Different policies emerge.
What The Data Actually Shows
Let’s cut through both the reformer propaganda and the establishment fear-mongering:
RCV doesn’t create moderate utopias. Alaska still elected conservatives and progressives. But it elected conservatives and progressives who could build broader coalitions, who couldn’t rely solely on ideological purity.
It doesn’t eliminate negative campaigning. But it changes the calculus. You can attack your opponent, but not so viciously that their supporters won’t rank you second.
It doesn’t end polarization. But Unite America data shows a 20% reduction in legislative polarization scores in Alaska post-2022. That’s not transformation—that’s incremental improvement that actually matters for governance.
Voter confusion? MIT’s studies show error rates comparable to traditional elections after the first use. The “confusion” narrative is manufactured panic from people who benefit from the current system.
The Backlash Machine
Watching the establishment respond to RCV is like watching a parasite realize its host is taking medicine. The panic is immediate, overwhelming, and completely detached from actual voter experience.
In 2022, there were 33 bills supporting RCV nationwide. In 2023? Seventy-four. The response? Seventeen bills to ban it, with 16 coming from Republicans. Not because Republican voters hate it—62% of Alaskans approved after using it—but because the PAC infrastructure that controls Republican primaries knows it’s an existential threat.
The Democratic establishment isn’t exactly thrilled either. Yes, Democrats have introduced more RCV bills, but watch what happens when it threatens incumbent power structures. The resistance crosses party lines because the threat crosses party lines.
The Implementation Problem Nobody Discusses
Here’s where reformers consistently screw up: They pitch RCV as a revolution when it’s actually a technical adjustment that needs careful implementation.
You need voter education that doesn’t sound like condescending civics lessons. You need ballots designed by actual humans, not policy wonks. You need counting systems that don’t take three weeks to determine winners. You need to acknowledge that asking voters to rank candidates is more complex than checking a single box, and complexity has costs.
The reformers pretend these are minor details. The opponents pretend they’re insurmountable obstacles. Both are lying.
The Actual Bottom Line
RCV in open primaries isn’t going to save democracy. It’s not going to end polarization. It’s not going to eliminate money in politics. Anyone selling you those promises is as full of s**t as the people claiming it will destroy elections.
What it will do is break the mathematical model that allows 6% of voters, mobilized by unlimited outside money, to capture entire legislatures. It forces candidates to appeal beyond their base. It makes ideological PAC money less efficient. It lets the fastest-growing segment of voters—independents—actually participate in the elections that matter.
That’s not revolution. That’s reform. Incremental, technical, achievable reform that threatens billions in ideological infrastructure.
Which is exactly why they’re trying to ban it everywhere before voters figure out it works.
The West Virginia Model, Revisited
Remember those PACs that took out Craig Blair? Make Liberty Win, Stand For Us, West Virginia Family Foundation? They’re not just playing defense against RCV—they’re actively spreading their model to states that still allow it.
Their nightmare scenario: A state adopts open primaries with RCV, their hand-picked extremists lose to candidates who can build broader coalitions, and voters realize the sky didn’t fall. Once one red state shows it works, the containment strategy collapses.
That’s why the bans are happening now, before more states can run the experiment. It’s not about voter confusion or election integrity. It’s about preserving a system where $2 million in PAC money can buy a congressional seat through a primary that 94% of eligible voters don’t participate in.
What Happens Next
The smart money is betting against RCV expansion. The forces arrayed against it—both parties’ establishment wings, the ideological PAC infrastructure, the confusion-industrial complex—have more resources and better message discipline than reformers.
But here’s what they can’t control: The mathematical reality that their model depends on voter apathy and restricted participation. Every election cycle, the gap between what voters want and what the 6% deliver gets wider. Every primary season, more incumbent lawmakers get primaried by extremists nobody outside the base actually wants.
Eventually, that tension breaks. The question is whether it breaks toward reform like RCV, toward something more radical, or toward complete democratic collapse where primaries become purely theatrical and all power flows to whoever controls the PAC money.
If you’re betting on the status quo holding, you’re betting that voters will permanently accept being ruled by the preferences of ideological billionaires laundered through low-turnout primaries.
That’s not a bet I’d take. Even with the deck stacked against reform.
One Final Data Point
West Virginia’s ban on RCV passed along party lines. You know who didn’t support it? When actually polled, 58% of West Virginia voters wanted to keep RCV as an option.
But those voters don’t write $2 million checks to primary challengers. So their preferences don’t matter.
That’s the system. RCV threatens it. Which is exactly why—despite all its flaws and complications and overpromises—it might be worth fighting for.
Not because it’s perfect. Because it breaks the part of the machine that’s killing us.
The next article will post after Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving!
Data sources: Unite America Institute, “Not Invited to the Party Primary” (2024); Foundation for Government Accountability, “Myths of RCV” (2024); Bipartisan Policy Center, “Primary Turnout Analysis” (2023); Alaska Division of Elections (2022)
