XPost: alt.politics.elections, sac.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: schiffless-pelosi@latimes.com   
      
   Last night, Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Republican firebrand and   
   former governor Sarah Palin in Alaska’s special election for its   
   vacant House seat. Palin should have won. But it was Alaska’s first   
   time using ranked-choice voting in an election, and that spelled the   
   Trump-backed candidate’s doom.   
      
   For those unfamiliar with ranked-choice voting, here’s a primer: if a   
   candidate does not receive a majority — i.e., more than 50 percent —   
   of first-place votes, ballots are retabulated, the lowest-vote getter   
   is eliminated, and their votes go to voters’ second choice. This   
   process continues until a candidate clears 50 percent of the vote.   
      
   In the first round of voting, Peltola won 40.2 percent of first choice   
   preferences, followed by Palin’s 31.1 percent, and Republican Nick   
   Begich III’s 28.5 percent. This means 59.6 percent of voters initially   
   cast their ballot for Republican candidates.   
      
   After Begich was eliminated in the second round of tabulation and his   
   votes reallocated, 50 percent of Begich voters ranked Palin as their   
   second choice; with 29 percent crossing party lines to vote for Mary   
   Peltola. 21 percent of his voters chose not to rank a second choice, a   
   phenomenon otherwise known as ballot exhaustion.   
      
   With more than one-fifth of Begich’s voters declining to rank a second   
   candidate, Peltola was given the boost she needed to secure her   
   3-point victory (51.5 percent of the final vote tally) over Palin   
   (48.5 percent).   
      
   In a state Trump won by 10 points in 2020, Palin should have been a   
   shoo-in. Peltola will be the first Democrat to hold Alaska’s lone   
   congressional seat since the early 1970s, despite nearly 60 percent of   
   Alaska voters casting their ballots for a Republican.   
      
   Palin’s loss and such extreme voter disenfranchisement can be   
   attributed to Alaska’s adoption of ranked-choice voting, an electoral   
   system Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was instrumental in pushing   
   through.   
      
   According to Project Veritas, Murkowski staffers worked to change   
   Alaska’s primary into a ranked-choice voting system so as to ensure   
   Murkowski would defeat Trump-endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. And   
   it worked. After Alaska voters approved Ballot Measure 2 — an   
   initiative that established ranked-choice voting and discarded   
   multiple party primaries — Murkowski beat Tshibaka in the Senate   
   primary. If not for Ballot Measure 2, Tshibaka would’ve likely   
   defeated Murkowski in a traditional partisan primary. Come November,   
   Murkowski will likely beat Tshibaka again — all thanks to her efforts   
   to enshrine ranked-choice voting into law.   
      
   In effect, Murkowski just botched her own party’s showing in Alaska.   
   By pushing ranked-choice voting to ensure her own survival — and evade   
   Republican voters’ ire due to her impeachment vote — she   
   disenfranchised thousands of Alaskans and cost Palin her congressional   
   seat. Peltola is only heading to Congress because she picked up nearly   
   30 percent of Begich’s votes. Under a traditional first-past-the-post   
   system (through which most U.S. House races are decided), this would   
   not have happened.   
      
   While Peltola, Palin, and Begich will face off again in the regularly   
   scheduled general election for the same U.S. House seat this November,   
   it’s likely the outcome will be the same — all thanks to Murkowski.   
      
   https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/01/sarah-palin-should-blame-li   
   a-murkowski-for-her-special-election-loss/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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