On November 1, the New York Times published a story about Alaska’s Ballot Measure 2, which repeals the top-four system and eliminates Ranked Choice Voting. The story says, “Ballot Measure 2 would return Alaska to primaries open only to voters registered to a particular party.” Actually, Ballot Measure 2 would restore the system in place before the top-four system was approved by the voters in November 2020. Here is the text. See pages 13-14, which are in paragraphs “section 34” and “section 35.”

The system in place before Top-Four was in effect let any qualified party decide for itself whether to let independent voters vote in its primaries, and also the party could decide to let members of other parties vote in its primaries. Both major parties allowed some non-members to vote in their primaries. The Republican Party let independents vote in Republican primaries, and the Democratic Party not only let independent voters vote in its primaries, it let members of other qualified parties vote in Democratic primaries.

There is no reason to think that either major party would choose a closed primary for itself, given that they didn’t do that in the past.

In New York, every year, some major party nominees for Congress and state office submit general election petitions to run under other designations besides their major party designations. They seem to feel that this tactic will net them extra votes that they wouldn’t have received otherwise. See this story.

The Boston Globe has this lengthy analysis of how top-two has affected elections in California and Washington.