Palin loses – what does it mean?
I tend to think there are too many special things about this special election to come to many general conclusions.
The first special thing is Palin herself: my sense is that she’s no longer all that popular in Alaska, somewhat of a has-been. Her quitting the governorship probably didn’t sit all that well, either.
The second special thing is that the winner only has a few months in office before this election repeats itself and the voters will get another chance at essentially the same election, only this time for the full Congressional term.
The third special thing is ranked choice voting. That is very special indeed, and I’d like to keep it as rare as possible. Here’s how it works in Alaska:
Elections in Alaska now start with an “open” primary, in which candidates of all parties compete and all voters are allowed to participate, casting their ballots for the one contender they prefer. The top four vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election.
Then, in the general election, instead of just voting for one of the top four candidates, voters rank their preferences in order. They are allowed to rank candidates one through four, but are not required to do so — voters could instead choose only to rank their preferred candidate, or only rank their top two.
If no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the ranked-choice system is used to determine the winner.
First, the Alaska Division of Elections eliminates the candidate with the least amount of first-place votes. The votes that had gone to that candidate are then assigned to the second choice listed on those voters’ ballots.
If no candidate has topped 50% of the vote at that point, then the Division of Elections would go through a second round of tabulation. The fourth-place candidate would have already been eliminated, and in the second round, the third-place finisher would also be eliminated.
Those who ranked the third- or fourth-place candidate first would have their votes assigned to the highest-ranked remaining candidate on their ballots.
It is too much like a game of “Survivor,” and much too susceptible to misunderstanding by voters, as well as to winners who are not really favorites.
Whether the voters in Alaska were just sick of Palin, or whether ranked-choice voting made the difference, is unclear at this point. For two divergent views, please see this from Bonchie at RedState and this from Scott Johnson at Powerline.
I don’t know if Ranked Choice had anything to do with Palin’s loss but it’s a truly terrible idea that needlessly complicates the process.
I think it’s a remnant from the days when the Left saw itself as a coalition of minorities and Ranked Choice would be a way to overwhelm a white plurality winner in a primary. It’s also an idea Poli Sci majors love because it’s another lever of manipulation to exploit.
Mike
The way I am reading it is thus.
Ranked choice not only allows for voting for someone, but voting against someone. As you can boost your candidate and downgrade another. Simply by leaving someone off the ballot.
I can see both sides of this. Palin is not longer a strong candidate. But the party should quit its crying now. And convince 2nd level R’s from running and screwing them all over.
This system seems much more similar to the parliamentary system to me. Then the more traditional 2 party we are used to
60% of primary voters voted for a Republican, yet elected a Democrat. At last the Democrats invented a fool proof system to win all elections.
60% of primary voters voted for a Republican, yet elected a Democrat. At last the Democrats invented a fool proof system to win all elections.
Voters for the other Republican candidates had every opportunity to enter Gov. Palin’s name as a second choice, and their votes would have been transferred to her. For reasons best known to those voters, they declined to do that.
Again, ranked-choice is not a novelty dreamed up by James Carville. Versions of it have been used in Australia and Ireland for generations.
I don’t know if Ranked Choice had anything to do with Palin’s loss but it’s a truly terrible idea that needlessly complicates the process.
It’s not complicated at all and is an elegant way of replacing runoff elections.
I concur with both Mikes’ opinions. This is Weasel Voting.
Yes, once again, the Ds have played the Rs, who are either willfully ignorant, or all about being the Loyal Opposition. I think the latter, frankly.
Control the process, you have the power.
“It’s not complicated at all and is an elegant way of replacing runoff elections.”
When 60% of voters in an election cast a ballot for a Republican and a Democrat winds up winning, that’s confusing “elegant” with “undemocratic.” As I wrote, it makes the system more complicated to create more opportunities for manipulation by the political class.
Mike
Art Deco:
What you believe is complicated is not the arbiter of what actually is complicated as far as voters are concerned and as far as how tactical voting is done in such a situation.
I agree with those who think it’s complicated — or, at least, not immediately transparent. It may theoretically be “elegant” if you understand it, but how many do? If I were a voter in Alaska, I would have to take a little time with pencil and paper (or Excel) and figure out how different permutations (filling in a second, third, etc., name vs. not) mathematically would impact results. I suspect most people don’t do this, but instead “go with their guts,” which may or may not result in what they wanted.
The same people that think blacks and other minorities are too stupid to know how to get an ID card think ranked choice is wonderful.
What you believe is complicated is not the arbiter of what actually is complicated as far as voters are concerned and as far as how tactical voting is done in such a situation.
Neo, you take a ballot and you rank order among your choices (in this case four choices if I’m not mistaken). That’s not complicated.
When 60% of voters in an election cast a ballot for a Republican and a Democrat winds up winning,
A large bloc of Mr. Begich’s voters did not mark Gov. Palin as their second choice. They’re both Republicans, but many of his supporters had an issue with her. Not sure why, but that’s the way it is.
Yes, once again, the Ds have played the Rs, who are either willfully ignorant, or all about being the Loyal Opposition. I think the latter, frankly.
Lee, tell me. Ranked choice has been used in Australia for over a century. Did James Carville go back in time and invent it then for use now?
This is Weasel Voting.
What’s the weaseling? You have a first choice, a second choice, a third choice.
“Ranked choice has been used in Australia for over a century.”
And has the performance of the Australian government demonstrated its worth?
For a well-informed person, you are willfully obstinate about not understanding some things. Asking voters to rank multiple candidates in terms of preference is significantly more complicated than asking them to select one candidate out of many. It’s the difference between asking people what their favorite movie is and asking them to list their top 5 favorite movies in order. One takes considerably more thought and effort than the other. And in the real world, not elegant theory, decisions as you go down the list of candidates will almost certainly become more arbitrary and less rational.
Mike
begich is not a republican, he’s another prog mannikin like his father, who was the 59th or 60th vote for the serf’s collar that is obamacare,
what was her crime, speaking the truth, it has an exceedingly high cost, if you speak lies and gibberish, well then the naval observatory is yours, if you fund terrorists who destroyed cities, if you leave the country open to invasion, the world is your oyster,
And has the performance of the Australian government demonstrated its worth?
What’s your objection to Australia?
For a well-informed person, you are willfully obstinate about not understanding some things. Asking voters to rank multiple candidates in terms of preference is significantly more complicated than asking them to select one candidate out of many.
Putting five items on your grocery list is more ‘complicated’ than putting one item. People still manage.
“Putting five items on your grocery list is more ‘complicated’ than putting one item. People still manage.”
See, this is what I mean. You are obviously too smart and too educated to not know that analogy is total crap. Voting and shopping are not the same and no thoughtful person wants them to be the same.
But let’s indulge your deliberate foolishness. Ranked choice voting is like going to the grocery store with a list of five items and coming out with just one. But it’s not necessarily the item you most wanted or needed. It’s the item that was most commonly on everybody else’s grocery list.
Mike
giving the democrats another bite of the apple, is like larry miller’s line about divorce, like tasting sour milk, and then putting it back in the fridge,
it’s like thinking this caucasus crackup will do anything more than empoverish us, disarm us, and if we’re very lucky lead us to nuclear war, the evidence is clear after 6 months,
The slander about “quitting” is back, y’all!
She didn’t step aside in order to not become an expensive distraction, she quit.
Of course! Right on script.
I’ve seen it dredged up elsewhere. All the good little transcribers are saying it.
It’s as though people who oppose the swamp can’t be allowed win ever, not even when they obviously do the right thing, nevernevernever, under any circumstances. The media run them down relentlessly and unfairly (but it’s a joke!) for decades, hound their relatives for odd opinions, move in next door and spy over the fenceline, access their private emails for embarassing tidbits, make up and repeat comedy bits, and then scoff about how they are not “well liked.”
NOKD!
How bone-stupid do you have to be to keep falling for the notion that it’s just Caribou Barbie (or Drumpf, or DeathSantis) who isn’t “on brand” for the Good Thinking People. It’s YOU, too. YOU are the one they’ve been hating for. They just haven’t gotten around to slandering you and ruining your life. Quite. Yet.
So, sure. Go ahead, and scold Palin for having the temerity to run IN ALASKA as the Real Republican. What a quitter!
See, this is what I mean. You are obviously too smart and too educated to not know that analogy is total crap.
There’s nothing wrong with the analogy. You’re just being obnoxious.
Miguel:
Regarding the Caucus breakup, so Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia should all rejoin mother Roosia? Da! But not the Baltic states, Finland, nor Poland?
You forgot “Lions, Tigers, and Bears (rus), Oh, my!” to go along with Vlad, the maltreated “nationalist,” threatening to nuke any and all.
Whatever.
“There’s nothing wrong with the analogy.”
No. I specifically pointed out at least one glaring thing wrong with the analogy. What is obnoxious is you purposefully ignoring that.
Mike
Art Deco is correct. Adding up all the R votes doesn’t prove anything since there were two Republicans who were very different. The Democrat was a very strong candidate with recent actual government experience. Palin has been out of the action for a long time. The Democrat is not a Progressive, her pro-choice position is the only thing that sets her apart from most Republicans.
No. I specifically pointed out at least one glaring thing wrong with the analogy. What is obnoxious is you purposefully ignoring that.
If you wanted a more precise one, you have a strict budget, you write down your grocery list, and you decide what not to buy based on your priorities and the prices of given items.
My point was fairly straightforward, which is that it’s not complicated to rank-order your choices, just more complicated than marking one and not another.
Again, the utility of the system is most manifest in select circumstances, mainly in places which have vigorous 3d parties (like Alaska) and in places which are one-party dominant and competition such as it is occurs between a multiplicity of people with the same affiliation.
You want to reduce the level of complication in elections, you can repair the electoral calendar.
1. Move voting on ballot propositions, recalls, judicial candidacies, and offices auxilliary to or adjacent to the courts to May. Avoid primary elections and have petition candidates who, however, circulated among a particular body of registrants (to which they belong) and who do declare their adherence on the ballot.
2. Have all public offices subject to competitive elections or retention-in-office referenda serve four year terms, judges and federal officials excepted. Have judges serve whole number multiples of four year terms, say 12 years; you might make an exception for JP positions open to laymen, which might serve four years.
3. Reduce the number of public offices subject to competitive election or retention-in-office referenda. Make it a rule that specialized executive and quasi-executive position are not, by default, elective. Ditto special-function boards apart from school boards. If there be a critical mass of support for the idea of making your town clerk or state treasurer elective, you can provide for a petition campaign (requiring, say, 2% of the registrants in a given jurisdiction to affix valid signatures) to get a proposition on the ballot. Since making such offices elective would not be the default option, you could have a petition campaign to return the situation to the default state if the matter hasn’t been considered in six years and have an automatic referendum on the question if it hasn’t been considered in 30 years. Another thing you can do is abolish ceremonial offices or make them appointive (Lt. Governors should be a target) and have the lower house of state legislatures break out into regional caucuses to elect the upper house.
4. Sort your elections according to a comprehensive and regular schedule. Have general elections the Friday and Saturday after All Saints Day, primary elections in preparation for them precisely 10 weeks earlier, and the propositions and legal system elections 14 weeks prior to that. Have a stereotyped quadrennial cycle. For your November contests, have federal offices in year one; municipal councils, county councils, mayors, and county executives in year two; governor, state legislator, and congressional midterms in year three, and school boards and specialized executives (where applicable) in year four. For May contests, you have ballot propositions, recalls, and retention-in-office referenda in any given year as needed; in re competitive contests, you have general superior court in year one, municipal court in year two (with corporation counsel where applicable), general superior court in year three (with state attorney-general where applicable), and specialized superior courts in year four (with DA, public defender, sheriff, &c. where applicable).
5. Reduce the number of primary elections in preparation for November by classifying your constituencies. Where the party with the largest body of registrants exceeds in size the next largest by a factor of 2 or more, skip intraparty contests and have petition campaigns, having all aspirants to the office on the November ballot (with their party preference by their name). A ballot with one candidate per party (chosen in a caucus or convention or a primary in select circumstances) would be what you’d see in competitive constituencies.
6. Make it a practice that you arrive at a polling station, sign in at a desk and are handed a ballot pack which consists of the contests being held and is held together with grocery list adhesive. You go into the booth, separate the ballots out, and fill them out. Make it a rule of thumb that a ballot pack has no more than four ballots in it. If your elections in a given year require more, set up two desks and sign for a ballot pack at one and fill it out. You can sign it at the other for a different ballot pack if you choose, or skip it, or leave and return later. You might have, for example, municipal offices at one desk and county offices at another. School board at one desk, miscellanous specialized offices at another.
Democrats gamed this one by having the second Democrat from the top four drop out after the primary. Palin and Begich were the top two in the primary and would likely have been the top two in the general too had both Ds run.
That sort of gamesmanship really undermines ranked choice in my book.
Democrats gamed this one by having the second Democrat from the top four drop out after the primary.
No. They. Didn’t. The problem for Gov. Palin was that a critical mass of Mr. Begich’s supporters wouldn’t put her on the dance card. If I’m not mistaken, the number of Begich adherents who did not mark her as second choice was about 11,000.
hes a democrat, his father left the city of anchorage in ruinous debt, but you see the goal is to destroy the country, to pretend that peltoia is just a tool to that effect
Art… have you voted in Australia?
If not, you have zero idea how horrible a system it is. But because the folks with the power to change it got to the top of the dog pile by manipulating that system they have no incentive to change.
The %-age of donkey votes (improperly marked & therefore invalid) is telling. Mandatory voting masks the flaws because everyone has to at least mark a ballot. With the proliferation of minor parties and multiple multiple candidates for various elections here it just gets worse. Stick to something you know. This ain’t it.
In 2003, after an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, she [Palin] was appointed chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, responsible for overseeing the state’s oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency. — Wikipedia
Naturally Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, but I believe that Palin made a name for herself by exposing and routing out one or more corrupt good-ole boys on the commission. Just imagine how corrupt politicians and journalists feel about her becoming a member of congress.
Begich was the Republican nominee. Petola was the democrat nominee. Palin was the Palin nominee. Going into the Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), Petola was ahead of Palin by 17k votes, ahead of Begich by 22k. This meant that Begich was the first to drop out. Half of his votes went to Palin. 11k of his voters refused to rank any second candidate. 17k of his candidates ranked Petola second. Petola ends up winning 4 months in office by 5k votes.
During the campaign, Palin refused to ask her supporters to rank Begich second., something we will find out when Division of Elections release data on second and third choices. She was too cute by half.
A lot of conservatives up here remember Palin instrumental in Ted Stevens defeat in 2008 (believing the fraudulent DoJ prosecution and demanding he resign), election of democrat shill Bill Walker in 2014 (refused to endorse her LtGov Sean Parnell – Palin hates the oil companies; Parnell, not so much), and now this election. Over the last 14 years, Palin has been instrumental in electing democrats in 3 statewide races – US Senate, Gov, House. She is about to make it 4 for 4, as there is an election for the 2-year term on the state ballot in November.
Yeah, RVC sux, but this election turned because Palin flat out refused to support conservatives or Republicans. As such, like the other two elections, she managed to elect a democrat. And as such, Palin delenda est. Cheers –
As I recall, Palin deeply alienated Alaska’s GOP establishment and their supporters. A substantial portion of Mr. Begich’s voters almost certainly fall within that category.
But ultimately, upon what basis might we assume and trust that it was an honestly conducted primary?
Once credibity is lost, once distrust is confirmed, it’s game over for societal cohesion and the slide into darkness commences. In the political realm, this is the unforgivable and mortal sin of which the activist Left stands condemned. In their righteous arrogant assumption of and lust for unbridled power, they bring judgement upon themselves.
Art Deco – They sure did. Gross dropped out. Had he not dropped out, it is likely that Gross and Peltola would have split the ~40% of first place votes that went to Peltola, giving Palin and Begich passage to the second round. Then it would have come down to which R won more second place votes on ballots for the two Democrats. I suspect it would have been Begich.
You’re not wrong that Palin was doomed by her lack of appeal to a segment of her own party. So was Trump.
TommyJay on September 1, 2022 at 7:51 pm said:
“Naturally Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, but I believe that Palin made a name for herself by exposing and routing out one or more corrupt good-ole boys on the commission. ”
Untrue. Seeing Palin was an up and coming politico, one of the insiders took her under his wing in an attempt to educate her about the oil and natural gas industry in AK. Palin was completely clueless about anything and everything associated with oil and natural gas. Palin took the education assist as a personal attack, essentially saying she was an idiot in the subject area (which she was and continues to be), and trumped up a loud and very public e-mail scandal to get her name in the news as a hero. None of it was as she or the media portrayed it.
Nobody knew at the time that Palin fundamentally hates the oil and natural gas producers upon whose backs this state operated. But we sure as heck know now.
Note that for the record, Sarah was not the one that came up with “Drill, baby Drill.” That was Michael Steele, NRC Chairmen, who as a former MD LtGov knew more about oil and natural gas than Sarah would (and will ever) know. Cheers –
I live in Anchorage and have lived in Alaska for 46 years now. I missed the voting on ranked choice (that’ll teach me to miss an election!), but I can tell you that a lot of people don’t like Palin cause she left. We have a long history of people making money here or being in politics and then leaving the state. A friend of mine pointed out that we are treated as a resource colony. And we resent that. If you want to look into political hit jobs, look into the Ted Stevens-Mark Begich (Nick’s uncle) Senate race. Sorry for the rant.
“My point was fairly straightforward, which is that it’s not complicated to rank-order your choices, just more complicated than marking one and not another.”
Nope. Again, you are just willfully stupid on this. Which you proceed to demonstrate by going on at length on a subject NO ONE has even suggested. Which fits right in with the ONLY justification for Ranked Choice voting you’ve offered, which has been “It’s elegant” and “Australia does it.”
By the way, here are probably the two best arguments for Ranked Choice voting.
1. It disincentivizes the divisive approach to politics.
2. It opens up more opportunities for success for single-issue and niche candidates. For example, people who would NEVER vote for the “Legalize Marijuana Now” candidate might be willing to rank them somewhere in their top 5.
The main argument against Ranked Choice voting is that it incentivizes a strategic approach to voting that actually interferes with the expression of the majority will. Fundamentally, an election is the public deciding “we want to go this way, not that way.” With Ranked Choice voting, you can wind up going “that way” when the majority actually wanted to go “this way.”
Mike
“If you wanted a more precise one, you have a strict budget, you write down your grocery list, and you decide what not to buy based on your priorities and the prices of given items.”
And just to be clear, the analogy sucks because you’re going to end up with only ONE of the items on your list and that ONE item is going to be determined by what everybody else had on their list. Who would ever shop for groceries in that manner?
Mike
why did they set this system up this way, because they fear the majority of the people, so eric adams, the mills woman, in maine, the boudin punk, they were all ranked choice vote, it will probably save murkowski who has voted for at least three of the worst nominees, garland, austin and mayorkas, is there a fourth horsemen,
we have seen what this illegitimate regime has done to alaska, but yet people still need to suffer more poverty, more crime, more humiliation, murkowski games the system at the expense of justice, security, and existence,
Thanks for that agimarc. I’ll defer to your superior knowledge.
this is what murkowski has wrought
https://twitter.com/davereaboi/status/1565353792287420416?cxt=HHwWgMDRkeC-oLkrAAAA
as well as making the murder of unarmed protesters a thing,
And just to be clear, the analogy sucks because you’re going to end up with only ONE of the items on your list and that ONE item is going to be determined by what everybody else had on their list. Who would ever shop for groceries in that manner?
Strange as it may seem to you, these contests have one victor and it often is not your candidate.
Art Deco – They sure did. Gross dropped out. Had he not dropped out, it is likely that Gross and Peltola would have split the ~40% of first place votes that went to Peltola, giving Palin and Begich passage to the second round.
That’s a curio of their best-of-four system, which has an unnecessary step they could eliminate. Wouldn’t have done much good for him to withdraw had they not had that unnecessary step. The fundamental problem in the last round of tabulation was that Begich supporters would not mark her as a second choice.
have the last two years, not shown you how they will game the system, for evil, because what can surrendering a full complement of weapons to the taliban, to targeting parents at school boards, to flooding the country with millions of illegals,
But ultimately, upon what basis might we assume and trust that it was an honestly conducted primary?
Is the Maricopa County commission running elections in Alaska now?
If not, you have zero idea how horrible a system it is.
If you have a complaint, you need to specify what the complaint is, not just vent.
Nope. Again, you are just willfully stupid on this. Which you proceed to demonstrate by going on at length on a subject NO ONE has even suggested. Which fits right in with the ONLY justification for Ranked Choice voting you’ve offered, which has been “It’s elegant” and “Australia does it.
The moderator has instructed me to not make contentious personal remarks about other participants. Maybe it’s the way you wear your hair or maybe it’s your shoes, but she has elected to cut you slack in this regard.
My discussion of other issues was to delineate the ways you can simplify choices in a given election. You have, you know, been complaining that ranked choice is too complicated. Meanwhile, we all show up at the polls with a bewildering stew of candidates running at the federal, state, and local level. Understanding my point really is not that difficult, but you’ve failed twice and told me I was stupid in the process. Conversations with you have a familiar dynamic.
one sees very clearly the objection to o’donnell was not that she dabbled in witchcraft as a teen, but she was a christian, heck you can hex people to death, like sally quinn confessed and you don’t lose a step, sinema is a wiccan btw, and binary, and she hexxed us good,
She would have won the Republican nomination under the old system and probably would have gone on to win the seat, but she split the Republican vote with Begich and Begich’s voters made the Democrat their second choice.
What do Alaska and Maine have in common, apart from ranked choice voting? They both have senators who ran as independents, Lisa Murkowski and Angus King. I think the two states adopted ranked choice voting so that in a three candidate race the more liberal candidates never split the vote and allow the Republican to win.
I was never a great fan of Palin though. She was one of those politicians that I always wished would “grow” and become what I hoped they could be. Bush the Younger was one. Donald Trump was another. Bush and Palin were major disappointments. Trump turned out to be a pretty good president (before COVID), but he botched the 2020 debates. He did surprise me with his successes, but his last year was a disappointment.
Begich’s grandfather and uncle were each in Congress. Mention of his name takes me back to the 1972 plane crash that killed his grandfather and Cokie Robert’s father, Hale Boggs.
I’m having trouble seeing a big difference between “ranked choice voting” and an old-fashioned runoff. Are you saying that all those Begich voters, who didn’t bother to indicate a second choice on their ballots, would have trudged back to the polling places to vote for Palin in a traditional runoff election? That doesn’t seem logical.
Alaska has lost might as well hand it back to to Russia at this point
So? Why do his voters get to decide which candidate wins? He came in last.
It’s amazing that no one else sees the problem with this:
This system is specifically designed to allow the backers of fringe candidates to decide the election. It shouldn’t be hard to see. Consider this example:
Candidate A gets 49% of the first-place votes. No voters for candidate A list a second choice, as candidate A is their only choice.
Candidate B gets 48% of the first-place votes. Every voter for candidate B lists candidate A as his second choice.
Candidate C gets 3% of the first-place votes. Every voter for candidate C lists candidate B as his second choice.
In this example candidate A has a plurality of the first-place votes and the overwhelming majority of the second-place votes, but candidate B is declared the victor, because he was the second-place choice *of the fringe candidate’s* voters. The second-place votes of the first-place and second-place candidates don’t count.
The system is designed to draw out the backers of the fringe candidate C and then redirect their votes to candidate B.
That’s probably what happened here. Begich was likely the second choice of both the Peltola and Palin voters, but those second-choice votes don’t count. So ranked-choice voting cost the Republicans the seat — as it was designed to do — but it was probably Begich who would have won in a head-to-head contest, not Palin.
But we’ll never know — and that’s also by design.
1) Palin doesn’t “own” Republican votes. If you want a system where you vote for a party and then the party fills the seat, look elsewhere.
2) Not complex? Yes, that’s why plurality/first-past-the-post systems give you results day of, rather than two weeks later. More importantly, it’s easy to demonstrate the sausage making. The back end’s complexity is also important; if the average voter balks at the results and can’t follow what the vote talliers are doing, you’ve got a legitimacy problem.
3) There’s no such thing as a perfect voting system; they all fail in certain cases. Most systems fall victim to ‘strategic voting,’ that is, lying about your preferences to help a preferred candidate to win. The one that I’m aware that doesn’t fail that way can give you different answers if the polls evaluate candidates in a different order; that is, there is no ‘unique’ winner.
4) The primary advantage of ‘most votes wins’ is that it’s simple to explain, participate, administer, and troubleshoot. The biggest downside is that people worry about ‘throwing their vote away’ because they believe that their preferred candidate has no chance, so shouldn’t they vote for someone with a chance at winning and get a slightly better result than with the other major candidate?
Are people being deliberately obtuse you vote for someone who believes in this country or wants to throw it away.
She has sacrificed much as a truth teller her son bears the scars of the long war that she trusted the pols to become involved with and the va system that discarded him aftet
Art…now you’re just being as ass.
Have you voted in Australia? Yes? No?
Not even a ranked choice, a simple response tells me all I need to know.
Have you tried to sort out preferences for multiple “teams” of candidates from multiple parties large & small…including the independents or single-issue candidates who are also on the ballot?
Have you tried to rank upwards of 30 candidates according to the voting rules of your electorate without invalidating your vote?
I’m assuming no. You have no idea what you are discussing. You think this is a pissing contest & if you get higher up the wall that means something. Not today.
You’re just wrong. We all know it. You’re just the last to own it.
Bauxite:
By the way, just about ALL Republicans are “doomed by their lack of appeal to a segment of their own party.”
Palin and Trump fail to appeal to the moderates. Romney and many others in the GOPe fail to appeal to the segment that Palin and Trump appeal to.
Goldwater vs. Rockefeller wings, if you want a historical reference.
agimarc,
Michael Steele is a RINO commentator for MSNBC and frequent trasher of Trump. That should tell you all you need to know about him. That you site him as a reliable source for anything is concerning.
Art Deco,
“Is the Maricopa County commission running elections in Alaska now?”
Other than wishful thinking, upon what basis do you conclude that the rot hasn’t spread that far? Evidence unseen is not proof of nonexistence. Whereas, a civilization in cultural decline inherently implies widespread corruption of its citizen’s probity.
Palin broke faith with her voters by not serving out the term they elected her to, for _what_? Seems like her career went downhill from that point.
“Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”
The sound is out tonight on my computer. So I can’t stream speeches or commentary.
But I did come across this sure fire LOL! howler at Steve McIntyre’s Twitter\thread to share with you:
Sean Davis
@seanmdav
·5h
I unfortunately didn’t get to watch Biden’s speech live. Afterwards did he and his friends set fire to a pile of books before setting off to hunt down Indians Jones and his dad?
I’ll reprise a comment I made at Althouse’s on this topic.
While RCV and other innovations like At-large Congressional Districts and proportional voting may not lean left, I have yet to see them proposed in any locality other than ones where Democrats frequently lose close elections and RINOs have a tough time winning. The people proposing them rarely seem concerned that Republican Congressional candidates in California got around 45% of the popular vote in a recent election but won only about 30% of the House seats. Kinda like how everybody who slags on the Electoral College goes ‘but Wyoming!’ even though Vermont, Rhode Island, and Delaware have only slightly larger populations per EV.
We have two parties. One knows how to get elected but doesn’t know how to govern. The other knows how to govern but doesn’t know how to get elected.
I leave it to you to determine which is which.
Having to pay at least 500 k in legal fees against a never ending flood of ethics complaints have you not been paying attention since 2016!
I have had no use for Sarah Palin for several years now, starting when she quit the governorship and decided to go “Hollywood”. She was unimpressive during her stint as a Fox News Contributor Now she seems like an embittered has-been and has as much connection with Alaska as Liz Cheney has with Wyoming. For some strange reason she became a saintly figure for many people on the Right, probably because in 2008 she actually wanted to win while John McCain just wanted to lose by a small margin and then go back to being the Left’s favorite Republican.
I have had no use for Sarah Palin for several years now, starting when she quit the governorship and decided to go “Hollywood”. She was singularly unimpressive during her stint as a Fox News Contributor and now she seems like an embittered has-been and has as much connection with Alaska as Liz Cheney has with Wyoming. For some strange reason she became a saintly figure for many people on the Right, probably because in 2008 she actually wanted to win while John McCain just wanted to lose by a small margin and then go back to being the Left’s favorite Republican.
Sophisticates like niki haley or kristi noem one will defame a whole peoole because of one drunk tweaker one lets girls be threatened by psychotic chimera
She hasnt been in office for 13 years but murkowski that eldritch orc has and look how much damage she has wroughf
Palin’s the one politician that I can think of who walked away from The Game (for clearly expressed and decent reasons) and made money in the private sector.
Oooh, how awful! How terribly gauche!!
How awesome. And she got back in the game again to try to make a difference now that the rest of the world has finally caught up to her. Gross!
And as for “going Hollywood,” she leveraged her popularity like a champion. She knew she had two built-in demographics: People who genuinely liked her, and the haters, including those deepstate creeps from the McStain campaign who used her and then sold her out and now feature heavily in NeverTrump World. I don’t worry about her; she’ll be fine. But it’s also safe to regard the people who continue to automatically run her down as gullible, insecure, and easily swayed by mob opinion and faux conventional wisdom.
“Palin broke faith with her voters by not serving out the term they elected her to, for _what_?”
For what??? You have the gall to ask “For what?”? I’ll tell you for what — it was to keep her family out of bankruptcy.
And that’s exactly what the Democrats were doing to her in an organized and intentional fashion. Alaskan law at the time required her to fund the defense of ethics charges out of her own pocket. Once the Democrats realized this, they organized an effort to flood the system with bullshit ethics complaints, causing her to spend tens of thousands of dollars of her own money to defend against each one.
The Democrats even publicly stated that they were going to keep filing bogus charge after bogus charge until she was ruined, either through bankruptcy or resignation. She has a special-needs child that needs constant care, and even more so than most families hers would be devastated by personal bankruptcy. So she chose resignation instead of certain bankruptcy.
She was the victim of an organized effort of personal destruction. To hold that against her as some sort of personal failing is disgusting. I, for one, am glad that she fought the good fight for as long as she did. We need many more people like her.
I have yet to see them proposed in any locality other than ones where Democrats frequently lose close elections and RINOs have a tough time winning.
It’s in use in Minneapolis and New York City.