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Alaska’s next Member of Congress will be a Democrat, Mary Peltola. She beat two Republicans in a special election held Aug. 16 under the state’s new ranked-choice voting system. Congratulations to Ms. Peltola, and no disrespect intended . . . but what in the heck? Alaska voted for President Trump in 2020 by 10 points. Is this now the true will of the electorate?
The second-place finisher was Sarah Palin, and part of the story seems to be that Republicans were polarized by her history. Yet parsing the results is tricky given how these ranked-choice elections operate. The ballot lets voters choose multiple names in order of preference. If no candidate wins a majority, the bottom contender is eliminated, and that person’s voters are reassigned to their second choices (or third or fourth, as the process goes on).
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