Trump Rants Against ‘Crooked’ Ranked-Choice Voting in Increasingly Odd Senate Race: ‘They Throw Everybody Into a Hat’

President Donald Trump went on a tear at the White House on Wednesday against ranked choice voting, dismissing it as “crooked” while discussing an unusual race in Alaska.

While speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump discussed an Alaska Senate race that includes two Republicans named Dan Sullivan, including one of the state’s senator, Republican Gerald Heikes, and Democrat Mary Peltola . The Alaska Division of Elections named the four candidates as those who will be on the ballot for the midterms following an all-party primary.

Trump is not happy with Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, which is used in dozens of jurisdictions.

Trump, however, is no fan, naming it as his latest example of a “crooked” voting system when asked about the Alaska race by Gray Television’s White House Correspondent Jon Decker. 

He said:

Just to show you how crooked the Democrats are, first of all, they have ranked choice, which is a crooked form of voting. It’s totally dishonest, ranked choice. They throw everybody into a hat and somebody backstage that nobody knows picks a winner. It is ridiculous.

Ranked-choice voting allows voters to rank candidates on ballots by order of preference, though they do not need to rank all of the candidates. After a first-round count, if no one has 50% or more of the vote, then the candidate in last place is eliminated and those votes are distributed based on voters’ other preferred candidates. The process repeats itself until someone has a majority.

Advocates for ranked-choice voting have argued the system is less friendly to a two-party system and opens up third-party candidates being elected. They also argue the process forces voters to be more informed about multiple candidates. Critics argue the system is complex to the average voter and isn’t fair to whichever candidate did win more votes than others individually.

In Alaska’s unusual Senate race, the non-senator Sullivan has been accused of being a Democrat plant to siphon votes off of the actual Republican senator.

Trump even warned voters in a Truth Social message about the confusing ballot they’d be seeing ahead of the primary.

“ALASKA: Be careful, VOTE FOR THE REAL DAN SULLIVAN TODAY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Through me, he’s brought HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS BACK TO YOUR STATE. The Dumocrats know how good he is and have put up an imposter of the same name,” he wrote.

On Wednesday, Trump called the two Sullivan situation a “disgrace.”

“This guy’s a phony. And he was put up by the Democrats, and they don’t admit it, but it’s been so proven. So I will go to Alaska to make sure that a great senator gets reelected. I will be going to Alaska. I’m going to be going the last 30 days before the election,” the president vowed.

Watch above via CSPAN.

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