The surprise victory of Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola for the remainder of the late Don Young’s House seat has discomfited the Republicans. As with the 2020 Trump election, Republicans can not lose, they can only be cheated out of what is rightfully theirs.
Critics are paying special attention to Alaska’s new Ranked Choice voting system. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) called it a “scam”. MAGA pundit Josh Hammer demanded the system be suspended “until we can figure out what the hell is going on”. The RNC claims that “ranked-choice voting disenfranchises voters.”
Republican complaints are up against the “Arrow Impossibility Theorem”, which shows that there is no “perfect” voting system for any race with more than two candidates. (I will explain what “perfect” means shortly.) In fact, the existence of paradoxical results in common three-person election systems was established by the French polymath the Marquis de Condorcet back in 1785. Kenneth Arrow won the Nobel Prize Prize in Economics for the Impossibility Theorem and further research into Social Choice Theory. Condorcet died in prison, a victim of French Revolutionary fervor. Timing is everything!
Let’s compare what happened in Alaska to the 2010 Maine gubernatorial election. Right-wing Republican Paul LePage won with only 37.6% of the vote. Two independents and the official Democratic candidate split the rest of the vote. LePage was elected even though a considerable majority of the electorate voted for candidates who despised him. Needless to say, Sen. Cotton, Mr. Hammer, and the RNC had nothing bad to say about this result! We are accustomed to seeing unpopular candidates win in the usual First Past the Post system. (Maine switched to ranked choice, but the Maine Supreme Court held the State Constitution did not permit it in elections for state office; it is in use for Maine’s Senate and House races.)
The Maine “spoiler” result violates the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives property we would like a perfect voting system to have. The other principles are that no one voter can determine the result (No Dictator) and that if every voter prefers A to B, then in the election as a whole A is preferred over B (Unanimity). And Arrow showed that no system can do this.
What makes the Alaska result look curious is not that Peltola won: she also had the most first-place votes and would have won under First Past the Post rules. After the first round, she had 40%, former half-term Governor and MAGA favorite Sarah Palin had 31%, and Nick Begich, Republican scion of a well-known Democratic political family, brought up the rear with 29%, so he was eliminated. The “surprise”, or paradox if you will, is that the final winner in a ranked-choice election can depend on the order in which the losing candidates are eliminated. Begich ballots’ second-choice votes fell 50% to Palin, 29% to Peltola, and the remainder blank or invalid. Palin was left over 5000 votes short. But the Republicans are probably correct in surmising that if Begich had finished ahead of Palin (but still in second place), he would have overtaken Peltola. That only half of Begich voters listed the other Republican second is quite remarkable. It’s easy to imagine greater party loyalty from Palin voters in the event she had finished third and been eliminated: 60% for Begich instead of the actual 50% for Palin would have been enough to eke out a GOP win.
The exact same candidates are on the ballot, under the same Ranked Choice system, for the full term beginning in January 2023. Needless to say, Begich and Palin are accusing the other of being the spoiler, and both have a valid claim. Palin points out that Begich finished third. Begich points out that he would probably win a two-person race against Peltola, while Palin has just lost an instant runoff that is essentially that head-to-head contest. Each is calling on the other to drop out. Maine once again provides us with a hint this will not happen: in 2014, LePage was re-elected with 48% of the vote. The Democrat had 43%. One of the losing Independent candidates of 2010 ran again, and served as spoiler with 8% of the vote. (LePage, who was termed out in 2018, is running yet again this year.)