On Thursday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) said that because Alaska has ranked-choice voting, “if you recruited a third-party candidate who can take votes away from your opponent, that’s part of the process,” and he wishes his state had ranked-choice voting as well.
Subramanyam said that “Republicans pushed third-party candidates against [Mary Peltola], against me, against many other Democrats over the years.” And people on the right “tried to get the Green Party a higher profile to take away votes from Kamala Harris.”
Host Connell McShane then asked, “[I]f it was you, would you have done this, tried to find someone with your opponent’s name…what do you say?”
Subramanyam answered, “I wouldn’t, but I also don’t have a ranked-choice voting system in Virginia. I wish I did, honestly. But, in Alaska, they have ranked-choice voting, and third-party candidates are very relevant. And so, if you recruited a third-party candidate who can take votes away from your opponent, that’s part of the process, and that’s just how it works in Alaska.”
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