This think tank with Jason Sorens also put Alaska at the bottom (44 out of 50). That’s the Jason Sorens of Free State Project infamy. I was a member of the FSP for a few years and thus know that Jason has even less grounding in the realities of state and local politics and economics than Obama.
Many of their individual criteria or ratings are graded from an idealistic anarcho-libertarian perspective. They ignore the reality facing which are relatively large, sparsely populated, resource dependent and military installation intensive.
If it were up to me I would rank Michigan higher on the personal freedom scale because we do pretty much as we please outside the cities anyway.
Seems to be a somewhat subjective rating system.