A ballot initiative in Alaska passed in November 2020 changing their election system (and adding a bunch of campaign finance watchdog measures). The new system is a top-four primary (vote for 1, top four go on) followed by a four-way Instant Runoff Vote (IRV) general election. IRV is known flawed and a pick-one vote with more than four choices isn’t good either.
They also included vote-suppressing language where if a voter ranks more than one choice at the same rank their vote is disqualified if that tie becomes their top vote (if you cast a tie for 2nd but your 1st wins, you’re fine, but if your 1st doesn’t win your vote is gone) ([1] p.9 section 15.15.350.e.1). This is unnecessary. It would be trivial to cast a half-vote for each choice of the tie, or to temporarily set aside the tie-ranked ballot which could come back if half of the tie-rank got disqualified in an IRV round.
2022 should show us the system in action.
[1] 2020 Alaska Better Elections Initiative http://www.elections.alaska.gov/petitions/19AKBE/19AKBE-TheBill.pdf
