Alaska apparently elects its first Alaska Native to Congress; Sarah Palin loses in the state's first ranked-choice election

Mary Peltola (ADN photo)

More than 60 years after it became a state, Alaska will be represented in Congress by an Alaska Native, if an election review board endorses results tabulated Wednesday in the state's first ranked-choice election. About 15 percent of the state's population identifies as indigenous.

In a special election to fill the vacancy created by the death of Republican Don Young, Democrat Mary Peltola edged out Republican Sarah Palin "after ballots were tallied and votes for third-place GOP candidate Nick Begich III were redistributed to his supporters’ second choices," reports Iris Samuels of the Anchorage Daily News.

Peltola, a Yup’ik from Bethel, would also be the first woman to hold Alaska’s only House seat. Palin, a former governor who was her party's 2008 vice presidential nominee and was endorsed by Donald Trump, may have been done in by the ranked-choice system, which tends to favor more moderate candidates. She and Begich got nearly 60 percent of first-place votes, but only half of Begich's voters made her their second choice, and 29% chose Peltola, giving her 51.5% of the final vote. Palin told supporters, “The task in front of me is to explain to Alaskans why ranked-choice voting is not in the public’s best interest.”

Peltola had placed fourth in the June 11 primary, barely qualifying for the Aug. 16 mail election. Independent Al Gross, who placed third, withdrew and endorsed her. It took two weeks to count the ballots and assign the ranked choices. "Another election in November will determine who holds the seat for the full two-year term that begins in January," Samuels notes. "Peltola, Palin and Begich said after results were announced Wednesday that they intend to remain in the November race." Palin called on Begich to drop out.

UPDATES: Alex Wagner of MSNBC said ranked choice rewards "crossover appeal," which Peltola had, partly from her time in the state legislature. "People are craving people who want to build coalitions," Peltola told Wagner. Conservative columnist Henry Olsen of The Washington Post writes that Palin was the victim of her own campaign, not ranked-choice voting, which he says could help Republicans if they use it like it has been used in Australia. "Suppose she had won a Republican primary and faced Peltola in a traditional one-on-one contest," Olsen posits. "Her high negatives could easily have spawned the same result. . . . In some sense, ranked-choice voting 'worked' because the candidate who was disliked by a majority of voters lost; the new system just made it easier for voters to register their disapproval of her." 

Daniela Altimari of Route Fifty reports, "According to the nonpartisan group RepresentUs, two states, one county and 52 cities, including San Francisco and New York, are expected to use ranked choice voting for at least some of their upcoming elections. Voters in Maine cast ranked-choice ballots in the 2020 presidential election and similar systems are in place in several communities in Minnesota. Alaska voters narrowly approved ranked-choice voting in 2020." CBC News notes, "The state has more registered unaffiliated voters than registered Republicans or Democrats combined."