Kohlhaas v. State: Encouraging Democratic Reform Through Constitutional Flexibility

Abstract

In the spirit of democracy reform, Alaska recently adopted a jungle primary and ranked choice voting electoral system for all state-wide elections. In Kohlhaas v. State, the Alaska Supreme Court upheld this reform against numerous state and federal constitutional challenges. While doing so, the court avoided rigid constitutional interpretations that would have frozen the electoral system in its current first-past-the-post state. Moreover, the court refused to credit the plaintiff\u27s speculation about the hypothetical malign effects of ranked-choice voting, placing the burden to produce hard evidence of their critiques on RCV\u27s opponents. Alaska can serve as a model for other states, as those states increasingly consider adopting electoral reforms of their own and must interpret similar state constitutional language