Yesterday’s election will determine, among other things, whether Sarah Palin, a former governor and candidate for the Republican vice presidential nomination, will represent Alaska in Congress.
Three people are running in a special election for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat, including the right-wing Republican. In Alaska’s first election under its new ranked-choice voting system, Sarah Palin will face off against Republicans Nick Begich III and Mary Peltola.
The victor will complete GOP Representative Don Young’s term by serving through the end of the year. After serving 49 years, he passed away in March.
Begich is a rich IT entrepreneur. He served as co-chair of Young’s 2020 campaign before abandoning him the next year and running to Young’s right.
He comes from a family of prominent Democrats and is named for his grandfather, the congressman who held the seat before Young.
With two conservatives splitting the vote, Peltola, a salmon advocate and former state legislator from western Alaska, is likely to gain the most first-choice ballots. But the winner of the special election won’t be known until the end of August, after all the mailed ballots arrive.
That’s when the Alaska Division of Elections will tabulate the rankings. The third-place finisher will be eliminated and the ballots that went to the candidate will be reallocated according to the voters’ second choices.
In 2020, a narrow majority of Alaskan voters approved the new procedure. It combines ranked choice voting in the main election with a nonpartisan primary.
One of the conservative candidates, most likely Sarah Palin, would need to garner enough second-choice votes from the other to defeat Peltola’s anticipated advantage in the first round of voting in order to win the special general.
For weeks, the two Republicans have been slandering one another while leaving Peltola alone.
Sarah Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska in 2009 following her unsuccessful bid to become John McCain’s vice presidential running mate in 2008 has been referred to by Begich as a “quitter,” a term that plays on the dissatisfaction that many Alaska Republicans felt at her decision.
