Weeks after suspending his campaign, the leading Democrat in Alaska’s U.S. House race officially withdrew ahead of Monday’s 5 p.m. deadline.

That withdrawal triggered a sequence of events that put the seventh-place finisher, a resident of Massachusetts who is not registered to vote in Alaska, on the ballot in November.

Democrat Matt Schultz received 8.1% of the vote in the August primary, good enough for third, behind incumbent Republican U.S. Representative Nick Begich III and independent challenger Bill Hill.

Begich had 44.6% of the vote, and Hill had 32.5%, according to official results published Monday.

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Hill, a fisherman and former superintendent from Bristol Bay, is a first-time candidate for federal office.

Under Alaska’s unique elections system, all candidates for an office run against each other in the primary election. The top four candidates, regardless of political party, advance to the general election in November. There, voters rank the candidates in order of preference.

The candidate with the fewest top rankings is eliminated, and any votes for them are redistributed to their voters’ second choices.

The process continues until only two candidates are left, and the person with the most votes wins.

If a top-four finisher withdraws, their spot is taken by the fifth-place finisher. If multiple finalists withdraw, their spots are filled by lower finishers.

Schultz suspended his campaign on July 17 in order to consolidate opposition fundraising and voter support. His withdrawal was followed by that of other trailing candidates.

With Schultz’s withdrawal, fourth-place finisher Eric Hafner — a registered Democrat in federal prison who received 3.8% of the vote — moves to the third spot on November’s election ballot.

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Two years ago, a state judge ruled that Hafner could remain a candidate even if he would be unable to serve his term due to his federal imprisonment.

Fifth-place finisher John Williams, a Democrat from Fairbanks who received 2.7% of the vote, withdrew from the race on Monday morning, he said by phone.

The sixth-place finisher, Republican candidate Clay Strickland, withdrew from the race before Monday, the Division of Elections said.

That left seventh-place finisher Yaquelin Reynoso, who received 1.8% of the vote in August’s primary.

Reynoso, who ran as a Democrat, does not appear on Alaska’s list of registered voters, didn’t answer a candidate survey and didn’t supply a phone number to the Alaska Division of Elections.

They also didn’t immediately respond to their listed email on Monday afternoon.

Ranked choice voting reduces the chances that candidates from the same party will split available voters and improve the odds for a candidate from a different party, but the system does not eliminate that chance entirely.

Since 2022, when Alaska began using the current system, a significant number of voters have continued to rank just one candidate.

As a result, political parties have pressured lower-finishing primary candidates to withdraw ahead of the general election in order to consolidate support.

Williams, by phone from Fairbanks, said he talked with “a lot” of people from the Alaska Democratic Party and with Hill before making his decision.

“I’m going to step away because that’s the best thing for Alaska,” he said, not because of any particular request that he quit.

Williams said he supports Alaska’s ranked choice election system, and he said he was discouraged by the number of Democratic Party officials who appeared to be acting against democratic values — the idea that voters, not political parties, decide candidates.

“I almost put my heels in the sand but ultimately decided not to,” he said.

“If (Hill) wins, he wins. If he loses, it’s not going to be because of me,” Williams said.