Sarah Palin will have to wait a couple of weeks to gauge the success of her unexpected comeback bid, as Alaska election officials tally mail-in ballots to determine the winner of the state’s first ranked-choice election.
More seriously,and not just because Palin is opposed to it, I’m coming to see the virtues of ranked-choice voting. This race in particular makes clear one of them: it helps to defuse polarization–or should have, in the case of the GOPers running. But Begich and Palin forgot that they are running against the whole field and not just the other members of their party.
Plain deserves a comeuppance. There are enough idiot insurrectionists in DC.
That doesn’t make any sense. It’s a lot easier to get an incumbent re-elected, than to oppose one in the fall. The DCCC should be supporting Peltola now, so she can run as an incumbent in the general.
Peltola’s right - the DCCC’s decision here is bizarre.
This seems like an amazing chance to both knock out a celebrity grifter whose constant blather would be breathlessly reported, and to elect a native Alaskan and Democrat to Congress. Win-win.
It allows minority candidates to have a voice. In the case of Democrats, a more liberal or more mainstream candidate can gain votes, but if they’re only 5-10% of the vote, but a vote for them wouldn’t be wasted.
With ranked choice voting, Ralph Nader’s votes would have gone to Al Gore in Florida in 2000.
I would have thought someone with Palin’s negatives and general shittiness could not have risen from the dead this way, but clearly Trump created the political equivalent of a zombie apocalypse, and those qualities are features, not bugs. You live long enough and you see it all, amirite? 
Voters have ranked their choices
I like this.
Who knew Alaskans were such gluttons for punishment.
I think that with rank choice voting one has to do more than tick the box (we use paper ballots where I live) that has a name with an R behind it.
Seriously. As if we don’t have enough to process in the War on Common Sense, seeing her back from the dead may push me over the edge. I feel like puking.
But it will all be cool if she crashes and burns in the general. No idea what the likelihood of that is.
"Palin, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump but held very few public campaign events, has criticized the new voting method at length, calling it the “screwiest system.”
I take it Palin doesn’t understand that Alaskans voted to establish this “screwiest system.” Palin probably believes George Soros or Hillary Clinton was behind the move to ranked voting.
I like it too. It makes voters think (and maybe even research) their choices.
That was the theory when California went with this system a few years back.
On the bright side, she’d probably quit after one year if she won the general.
Agreed and I think she would cast only about 50% of votes. Too busy on the DC dining & party scene to care about her job.
I doubt it, then she’d have to go back to Alaska. I hope her quitting the governorship to get the fuck out of Alaska is repeatedly mentioned in the general election.
The wicked witch of the truck stop will meet the same fate as her sisters. What a world.
calling it the “screwiest system.”
“This voting system is screwier than my thought processes, if you can all them that,” Palin added.
