Ranked voting’s incumbency paradox

Ranked‑choice systems can simultaneously help and hurt the same incumbent: the redistributive nature of preferences can carry a candidate over a plurality threshold in one cycle yet lead to their elimination in another depending on who ranks whom and how dark‑money disclosures alter second‑choice dynamics. Alaska’s six‑year experiment — and the return of the 2020 measure plus the fate of Senator Lisa Murkowski — shows how procedural design can produce unstable incumbency effects. — This reframes debates about voting reform by showing RCV doesn’t uniformly favor moderates or outsiders but can unpredictably reshape incumbency incentives, campaign strategy, and disclosure politics across cycles.