Peltola defeats Palin

[Bomb#20]

Sarah Palin seems like a very sore loser.

Well, in this case the alternative is to chock up her loss to her own failings as a candidate. What politician ever does that?

Wasilla, Alaska/September 1, 2022 - Today, Governor Sarah Palin called on her Republican opponent, Nick Begich, to withdraw from the race for Alaska's at-large congressional seat.

"Nick Begich is now is a three-time loser. His ego-driven insistence on staying in Alaska's congressional race after repeatedly failing to garner a majority of Republican votes, while I have consistently won the vote, has just cost Republicans a seat in Congress. Fortunately, there is still time for Begich to do the honorable thing and withdraw before the November election.

"From the moment he started attacking our respected Congressman, Don Young, 'Negative Nick' has focused all his energy on attacking his Republican opponents instead of going after Joe Biden and the radical democrats who are destroying our country.

She continued in this vein for most of the rest of that statement.

That's a pretty spot-on description of herself. Lost to Obama/Biden, lost the governorship on an own goal, lost to Peltola. And she cost the Republicans a seat by not withdrawing -- which, the numbers show, Begich didn't do: if he'd withdrawn, she'd still have lost. There is still time for Palin to do the honorable thing and withdraw before the November election, but her ego won't allow that.

"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. The people of Alaska do not want the destructive democrat agenda to rule our land and our lives, but that's what resulted from someone's experiment with this n convoluted, confusing ranked-choice voting system. It's effectively disenfranchised 60% of Alaska voters.

No, it only "disenfranchised" 49% of Alaska voters. She keeps taking for granted that the Republicans who prefer Peltola to her are hers by right.

 

[Bomb#20]

Ranked choice voting is just one way to improve the chances of getting an elected official who meets with the approval of most of the voting population. ...

In a normal election cycle, ranked choice voting seems to work quite well in terms of making representative democracy work the way it's supposed to work. First-past-the-post voting sometimes gives us representatives elected by a minority of the voting public, especially when there are third party spoilers bleeding votes away from a major party because of some special interest movement. Ranked choice lets everyone get a chance to get their top preference off their chests, but there needs to be a way to filter out top choices that are not favored by the majority of the voting public. If no candidate wins a majority of the votes, then it makes sense to give voters whose top choices were eliminated a chance to have their opinion still count in the election cycle.

If the intent is to have the winners meet with the approval of most voters, and to filter out top choices that are not favored by the majority, and to give voters whose top choices were eliminated a chance to have their opinion still count, it seems wildly counterproductive to all those goals to do eliminations in the first round based on top preferences only. Since the first round is for winnowing down to two, it would make more sense to score each candidate in the first round based on how many voters' 1st or 2nd choice she is, and eliminate the candidate who is the least preferred by the most voters.

 

[Jayjay]

Sarah Palin seems like a very sore loser.

Well, in this case the alternative is to chock up her loss to her own failings as a candidate. What politician ever does that?

Wasilla, Alaska/September 1, 2022 - Today, Governor Sarah Palin called on her Republican opponent, Nick Begich, to withdraw from the race for Alaska's at-large congressional seat.

"Nick Begich is now is a three-time loser. His ego-driven insistence on staying in Alaska's congressional race after repeatedly failing to garner a majority of Republican votes, while I have consistently won the vote, has just cost Republicans a seat in Congress. Fortunately, there is still time for Begich to do the honorable thing and withdraw before the November election.

"From the moment he started attacking our respected Congressman, Don Young, 'Negative Nick' has focused all his energy on attacking his Republican opponents instead of going after Joe Biden and the radical democrats who are destroying our country.

She continued in this vein for most of the rest of that statement.

That's a pretty spot-on description of herself. Lost to Obama/Biden, lost the governorship on an own goal, lost to Peltola. And she cost the Republicans a seat by not withdrawing -- which, the numbers show, Begich didn't do: if he'd withdrawn, she'd still have lost. There is still time for Palin to do the honorable thing and withdraw before the November election, but her ego won't allow that.

I think she genuinely doesn't understand how the ranked choice vote works, and thinks that Begich is the spoiler.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

That's a pretty spot-on description of herself. Lost to Obama/Biden, lost the governorship on an own goal, lost to Peltola. And she cost the Republicans a seat by not withdrawing -- which, the numbers show, Begich didn't do: if he'd withdrawn, she'd still have lost. There is still time for Palin to do the honorable thing and withdraw before the November election, but her ego won't allow that.

She claims it's all god's plan. Maybe god isn't so dumb after all.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I think she genuinely doesn't understand how the ranked choice vote works...

I think that goes without saying.

 

[Copernicus]

Ranked choice voting is just one way to improve the chances of getting an elected official who meets with the approval of most of the voting population. ...

In a normal election cycle, ranked choice voting seems to work quite well in terms of making representative democracy work the way it's supposed to work. First-past-the-post voting sometimes gives us representatives elected by a minority of the voting public, especially when there are third party spoilers bleeding votes away from a major party because of some special interest movement. Ranked choice lets everyone get a chance to get their top preference off their chests, but there needs to be a way to filter out top choices that are not favored by the majority of the voting public. If no candidate wins a majority of the votes, then it makes sense to give voters whose top choices were eliminated a chance to have their opinion still count in the election cycle.

If the intent is to have the winners meet with the approval of most voters, and to filter out top choices that are not favored by the majority, and to give voters whose top choices were eliminated a chance to have their opinion still count, it seems wildly counterproductive to all those goals to do eliminations in the first round based on top preferences only. Since the first round is for winnowing down to two, it would make more sense to score each candidate in the first round based on how many voters' 1st or 2nd choice she is, and eliminate the candidate who is the least preferred by the most voters.

It isn't at all clear to me how you think such an approach could be implemented in a way that would make sense to the public. The way RCV works right now in Alaska is that it kicks in only when there is no winner with an absolute majority. At that point, the usual winner in our first-past-the-post tradition is just the winner with the largest plurality, which disenfranchises the majority of voters. It is easy for the public to see the two top vote getters as runners-up, and some systems have runoff elections until an absolute majority is obtained. RCV is a sensible way to achieve a majority decision between the two top vote getters by asking the remaining voters to choose between those two without prolonging the agony with more campaigning and elections. It isn't supposed to make the majority happy. It is to force voters to make a choice quickly and efficiently about who they would trust to be their representative by the election deadline. Obviously, there will always be voter remorse among a certain number afterwards. Too bad, but choices have consequences. Choose more carefully next time. That's how representative democracies work.

 

[bilby]

Sore loser:

After Sarah Palin's election loss, Sen. Tom Cotton calls ranked-choice voting 'a scam'
noting
Tom Cotton on Twitter: "Ranked-choice voting is a scam to rig elections." / Twitter
and
Tom Cotton on Twitter: "60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat "won."" / Twitter

It's a matter of finding a candidate who is acceptable to the most people, even if not their first choice.

But at least some Republicans continue to be good losers:

Begich says he will accept results, but criticizes Alaska's ranked choice ‘confusion’

I generally think of ranked choice voting as different from first past the post in that under IRV, the winner is the least unpopular candidate, and not the most popular.

Which is the 'better' is a matter of opinion; Which is the 'fairer' (ie most representative of the voters' opinions) depends on the general attitude of voters towards the candidates as a bloc - if voters see voting as necessary to select the very best, from a great pool of excellent candidates, FPTP is the fairest; If it's instead a matter of picking the least bad from a pool of poor candidates (or a pool that contains a number of poor candidates), IRV is the fairest.

The latter is almost invariably the case in political elections; Most voters haven't got a list of several candidates they would like to see win, they have a list of several candidates they would hate to see win.

IRV therefore reflects better the will of the electorate.

Of course, there is one subset of the people who are inclined to believe that political candidates are the cream of society, and voters are selecting the very best from a pool of excellent options - and that subset is the candidates themselves.

It's therefore a subject on which it's important to discount the opinions of candidates, particularly losing candidates.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If over 60% of voters are registered republicans they expect a republican is going to be elected. That's a common refrain. What I like about RCV is that it encourages candidates to not demonize their opponents. It actually encourages them to appeal to a broader swath of the constituency, to literally carry on as intelligent, respectable adults. What happened in Alaska proves that if you don't appeal to a broad swath of voters and go about acting like a petulant child you are only hurting yourself. This is precisely why republicans lost the White House, Senate and House in 2020. Maybe one day they will "get it."

 

[Copernicus]

If over 60% of voters are registered republicans they expect a republican is going to be elected. That's a common refrain. What I like about RCV is that it encourages candidates to not demonize their opponents. It actually encourages them to appeal to a broader swath of the constituency, to literally carry on as intelligent, respectable adults. What happened in Alaska proves that if you don't appeal to a broad swath of voters and go about acting like a petulant child you are only hurting yourself. This is precisely why republicans lost the White House, Senate and House in 2020. Maybe one day they will "get it."

This aspect of RCV is what most appeals to me. Right now, a losing candidate in an FPTP election tends to pull out all stops to demonize the opponent, and sometimes that works very well. The same strategy applies to very close election campaigns. The Trump campaign succeeded very well with Hillary Clinton in 2016, but it failed in the case of Biden, but not for lack of effort. The demonization strategy is part of what is driving the extreme polarization we have, because the winner almost always ends up covered with a sullied reputation after the election. RCV incentivizes candidates to try to attract second-round votes, so the demonization strategy becomes less attractive.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It also implies that the tabulation of the votes is also done in multiple rounds, rather than just tabulating the results once and then calculating the outcome.

We don't know that there are multiple rounds of tabulating--if I were implementing this I would do it with a single round unless there were a lot of candidates.

I haven't been following this carefully but my impression is that there are three candidates. Thus there are only 4^3 = 64 possible ways to vote (some of which are impossible, but that doesn't matter), you make one pass across the ballots counting which of the 64 possibilities each of them is. Four candidates would give 5^4 = 625 possibilities, still easy to deal with. At 5 we have 6^5 we are up to 7,776 pigeonholes, still easier than making multiple passes. Even at six we have only 117,649 pigeonholes, still easier than repeated tabulations. 7 has 2,097,152 pigeonholes, still no problem for any computer not from the stone age. 8 has 43,046,721. 9 has a billion--so long as you have a 64 bit OS and a decent machine this isn't a problem. 10 becomes a problem, you need something beefy. How many elections have 10 candidates for one office, though?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The hateful Supremes did not get the message. Perhaps their personal glory was more important to them than the long-term success of the Party of Hatred.

They're fanatics. Given a chance they have to do what they can to impose Christianity, never mind how badly they're shooting the Republicans in the process.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the intent is to have the winners meet with the approval of most voters, and to filter out top choices that are not favored by the majority, and to give voters whose top choices were eliminated a chance to have their opinion still count, it seems wildly counterproductive to all those goals to do eliminations in the first round based on top preferences only. Since the first round is for winnowing down to two, it would make more sense to score each candidate in the first round based on how many voters' 1st or 2nd choice she is, and eliminate the candidate who is the least preferred by the most voters.

I have wondered about taking an utterly different tactic and work with proxies rather than electing people at all.

Everyone gets one vote and they must (not doing so is de-facto not voting) name someone to be a proxy for that vote. The list must be winnowed down to the size of the legislature--you sort the whole list by how many votes everybody has. Take the person at the bottom of the list and move his vote to his proxy. Repeat until you have reduced the list to the number of people you want in the legislature. The legislators vote their proxies, it's not one-legislator-one-vote. Organizations can get proxy votes but can't actually serve--any votes they get inherently get passed on. You pick people as proxies that you believe will vote your interests.

The downside is that while it's not actually necessary to reveal who selected who the information inherently must exist, it's not a truly secret ballot.

 

[Arctish]

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Alaska

Recently, over half of all registered voters in Alaska have chosen "Non-Partisan" or "Undeclared" as their affiliation. That's how the Ranked Choice Voting system got adopted.

The Republican Party isn't as strong as it used to be.

 

[Bomb#20]

If the intent is to have the winners meet with the approval of most voters, and to filter out top choices that are not favored by the majority, and to give voters whose top choices were eliminated a chance to have their opinion still count, it seems wildly counterproductive to all those goals to do eliminations in the first round based on top preferences only. Since the first round is for winnowing down to two, it would make more sense to score each candidate in the first round based on how many voters' 1st or 2nd choice she is, and eliminate the candidate who is the least preferred by the most voters.

It isn't at all clear to me how you think such an approach could be implemented in a way that would make sense to the public.

Well, I was optimizing for the listed goals; optimizing for being easy to understand may conflict with the rest of the objectives. There's nothing easier for the public to understand than first-past-the-post.

But it seems to me what I have in mind isn't actually hard for the public to understand. Alaska has a top-four open primary, and then the IRV part is between those four. So they have a round to pick the top three, followed by a round to pick the top two, followed by a round to pick the top one. Every voter gets what amounts to a "vote for no more than three" vote for who ends up in the top three, and then a "vote for no more than two" vote for who ends up in the top two, and then a regular vote for who is the top one. If your favorite candidate gets kicked out in the first round then your second and third choice become your two votes in the second round, and so forth. I don't think this is significantly harder to understand than the current system -- they're exactly the same except in the current system you only get to vote for one person in each round even though that round has two or three winners.

The way RCV works right now in Alaska is that it kicks in only when there is no winner with an absolute majority.

That would also be the case with my modification -- if anybody has an absolute majority of first-choice votes the other candidates will all be eliminated in one round or another.

RCV is a sensible way to achieve a majority decision between the two top vote getters by asking the remaining voters to choose between those two without prolonging the agony with more campaigning and elections.

What I'm describing is still RCV. There non-standard flavors of RCV; Condorcet is probably best-known.

 

[Swammerdami]

Peltola would win in the "First past the post" system. She also would have won the top-two runoff (if voters understood that the runoff was combined in the ranked-choice ballot). What's the problem?

How's any of that unfair?

Less information available to the voters about some candidates than others.

There's lots of info that could be made available, but isn't. What percentage of those voting Yes on California's Proposition 16 also voted for Trump? This isn't reported (although you can guess it from studying precinct data).

The information made available in Alaska is in principle the same information that would have been available had TWO elections been held: first the three-way, then the top-two runoff.

We DO know that 62.8% (resp. 37.2%) of the Begich voters who placed a second-place vote on one of the two women, placed that vote on Palin (resp. Peltola). Assuming that the 8446 Begich voters who wasted their second-place vote would have chosen between the women in the same 63:37 ratio, Peltola would still have won. (But would the ratio have been the same? That info would NOT show up even if every ballot were published. It would take exit interviews: "Did you waste your second-place vote because all female candidates nauseate you? Or because you were too stupid to understand the ballot?"

Peltola would win, whether FPTP, runoff, or the actual automated-runoff. Perhaps Alaskan voters just came to their senses: Is that so unimaginable?

After Sarah Palin's election loss, Sen. Tom Cotton calls ranked-choice voting 'a scam' noting Tom Cotton on Twitter: "Ranked-choice voting is a scam to rig elections." / Twitter ...

I don't get Cotton's point. Is he saying Republican voters tend to be stupid?

 

[Bomb#20]

Peltola would win in the "First past the post" system. She also would have won the top-two runoff (if voters understood that the runoff was combined in the ranked-choice ballot). What's the problem?

Sarah Palin.

After Sarah Palin's election loss, Sen. Tom Cotton calls ranked-choice voting 'a scam' ...

I don't get Cotton's point. Is he saying Republican voters tend to be stupid?

He's saying the problem isn't Sarah Palin. What else is he going to say?

 

[Arctish]

Palin calls for Begich to drop out of the congressional race but deadline arrives and neither budge​

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Sarah Palin seems like a very sore loser.

Well, in this case the alternative is to chock up her loss to her own failings as a candidate. What politician ever does that?

Wasilla, Alaska/September 1, 2022 - Today, Governor Sarah Palin called on her Republican opponent, Nick Begich, to withdraw from the race for Alaska's at-large congressional seat.

"Nick Begich is now is a three-time loser. His ego-driven insistence on staying in Alaska's congressional race after repeatedly failing to garner a majority of Republican votes, while I have consistently won the vote, has just cost Republicans a seat in Congress. Fortunately, there is still time for Begich to do the honorable thing and withdraw before the November election.

"From the moment he started attacking our respected Congressman, Don Young, 'Negative Nick' has focused all his energy on attacking his Republican opponents instead of going after Joe Biden and the radical democrats who are destroying our country.

She continued in this vein for most of the rest of that statement.

That's a pretty spot-on description of herself. Lost to Obama/Biden, lost the governorship on an own goal, lost to Peltola.

Technically, she never lost the Governorship... she abandoned that.

And she cost the Republicans a seat by not withdrawing -- which, the numbers show, Begich didn't do: if he'd withdrawn, she'd still have lost. There is still time for Palin to do the honorable thing and withdraw before the November election, but her ego won't allow that.

It is incredible how big an ego such a small fish can have.

 

[Jayjay]

Palin calls for Begich to drop out of the congressional race but deadline arrives and neither budge

What's interesting is this:

The Alaska Republican Party has formally endorsed Nick Begich for the seat. In an emailed statement, the Alaska Republican Party wrote:

“Cooperation amongst Republican candidates, is needed if both our endorsed candidate Nick Begich and Governor Palin remain in the race for the November election.”

There must be someone with at least half a brain cell in the Alaskan Republican party for them to have realized that Palin's antics are just hurting them.

 

[Blahface]

So it is official. The ballot data is out and Begich should have won. You can see a more detailed pairwise summary here, but this is the main pairwise results:

Begich beats Peltola with 52.5% of the vote.

Begich beats Palin with by 61.4% of the vote.

Peltola beats Palin with 51.4% of the vote.

If 2913 voters who supported Palin first and Begich second flipped their first and second preferences, they’d have gotten a more preferred result.

Even worse, if instead 5825 of those same types of voters just decided not to vote, they’d have also gotten a better result. So merely participating in the election hurt them.

This could be avoided if they had only used a Condorcet version of ranked choice voting instead of instant runoff voting.