Sarah Palin came out of the gate running strong when John McCain chose her, the then-governor of Alaska, as his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign and instantly made her a household name. But it soon became clear that, when left to her own devices, Palin could be a bit of a loose cannon, and not a particularly polished one. Which is essentially the reputation she has maintained in the years since — right up to and including her recent failed attempt to fill a House seat in a special election in Alaska. Now that she has had time to let her loss sink in, well, she’s kind of pissed.
As Yahoo! News reports, Palin now seems to be blaming Alaska’s ranked choice voting system as the reason for her loss. “Ranked-choice voting was adopted in Alaska in 2020 and has been hailed by proponents as a novel system to reduce partisanship and ensure that winning candidates have a majority of support,” Paul Best wrote for Yahoo! News. “Voters rank candidates in order of preference. If a candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-place votes after the first tabulation, then they win, but if there is no majority winner, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated.”
Which all seems fair enough. In the case of Alaska’s special election, Democrat Mary Peltola received 40 percent of the original vote, while Palin received 31 percent; 28.5 percent of voters chose Republican Nick Begich, so he was eliminated ahead of the next tabulation. Ultimately, Peltola triumphed with 51.5 percent of the second vote versus Palin’s 48.5 percent. While that all seems like a pretty good indicator that Peltola was indeed the people’s choice, Palin’s now complaining about this “new crazy, convoluted, confusing” system, which she claims has “disenfranchised 60 percent of Alaska voters.”
On Thursday, Palin issued a statement that read, in part:
Ranked-choice voting was sold as the way to make elections better reflect the will of the people. As Alaska — and America — now sees, the exact opposite is true. With optimism that Alaskans learn from this voting system mistake and correct it in the next election, let’s work even harder to send an America First conservative to Washington in November.
In other words: I didn’t win, so the system must be broken. Spoken like a true MAGA Republican.
(Via Yahoo! News)