A short report debunking the claims of exhausted ballots by critics of the Final Five Elections (FFE) system in Alaska.

A common critique of FFE is that it breeds “exhausted ballots” – that is, ballots where voters did not vote for one of the final two candidates. In fact, exhausted ballots are rare in elections determined by instant runoff. Looking closely at past race results, the facts are the opposite: in the 2016 Senate race won by Murkowski before FFE was instituted, 27.9% of ballots were exhausted and 3.2% were eliminated because they were blank or in error, but in the 2022 FFE race won by Murkowski, only 3.5% of ballots were exhausted and 1.5% were eliminated.

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