Democrat Mary Peltola, a former state representative, will be the first Alaska Native in Congress after she won a special election that included GOP candidates Nick Begich and former Gov. Sarah Palin, NBC News projects.
Peltola, who is the executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, served 10 years in the state Legislature and campaigned as “Alaska’s best shot at keeping an extremist from winning.”
She finished fourth in a crowded nonpartisan primary in June, when 48 candidates battled to secure one of the four spots on the Aug. 16 special election ballot. But heading into Wednesday’s final tabulation, Peltola was leading the pack.
The special election was the state’s first test of ranked-choice voting, which was implemented after a 2020 ballot measure. The same system will be used in November.
Voters cast their ballots more than two weeks ago to determine who will serve out the final four months of Young’s term after he died in March at age 88.
No candidate won more than 50% of the vote in the Aug. 16 election, which triggered runoffs under the new system, in which voters ranked the candidates in order of preference.
Based on the ranked-choice system, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates according to voters’ ranked preferences. The rounds continue until one of two remaining candidates with the most votes wins.
The elimination process didn’t start until Wednesday, the last day elections officials could receive absentee ballots.
Begich, Palin and Peltola are also competing in November to determine who will serve a full two-year term in the House. The three candidates got the most votes in the primary. A fourth qualifying candidate, independent Al Gross, later dropped out of the race.
Palin did not respond well to her vanquishing. Despite having agreed to the rules when she became a candidate on April 1st, Palin bewailed that ranked choice voting was unfair because she lost.
“When it comes down to second and third-place votes, that’s gonna decide who’s gonna win? Really?” she cheeped.
Palin was also mistaken about who was on the ballot.
“Alaskans want Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi?” she asked of the president and Speaker of the House, both of whom are Democrats.
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I love how NGN always dogs-out the (R) but never the (D), what’s that tell you WOKE-FOLK? Besides, what the hell kind of convoluted voting method was that? You fools keep voting (D) as in “Death Sentence” because that’s what you’re going to get! BAA, BAA, BAA,,,
Well, the state of Alaska will learn as did the states after the cheating China joe and the demoncRATs cheated America. Hopefully Alaska will not be as unlucky as America was. Time will tell. They should have known because they knew all that Palin did for their state until the lying fake press and the Rinos lied about her when she became the nominee for VP.
So Alaska will have 2 Republicans
running against 1 Democrat on the ballot
in November?
So, the Republican votes will be split
and the one Democrat will have an advantage from the get-go!
This is crazy!!!