AK-AL Special election: Peltola wins!

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Why would either candidate drop out?  The whole RCV system is created to avoid situations where we should have to worry about spoilers and thus there should be no pressure to drop out. 

Instant-runoff voting does not satisfy what Wikipedia (presumably following the academic literature) refers to as the independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion, and is thus still subject to spoiler candidates. It is important to recall here that Gross finished ahead of Peltola. Let's suppose that there are a significant number of Begich–Peltola–Palin–Gross voters. If Gross had stayed in the race and again outpolled Peltola, thereby eliminating her, then in a Palin–Gross final round those voters would have gone to Palin. In a Palin–Peltola final round, they instead go to Peltola.

Instant-runoff systems provide a strong incentive to vote strategically for more "electable" candidates. When candidates drop out in a system like this one, they ensure that voters will effectively have to vote strategically. If Gross viewed himself as less electable and prioritized electing a Democrat, then his choice to drop out has worked exactly as planned.

It's true that RCV doesn't satisfy IIA.  But almost all single-winner real-world voting systems fail to satisfy IIA, and RCV tends to do better on this than FPTP in the type of real-world situations we are likely to see.

I guess my sense is while Gross dropping out -might- be strategic for the Democratic party (although I'm skeptical there are a nontrivial number of people who rank Begich–Peltola–Palin–Gross), it seems antithetical to the intent of the reform, and contrary to the will of the voters. 

It's like if under the old system the Republican party held a primary where Palin beat Begich, and then the party just decided to cancel the result and make Begich their nominee because he was more "electable".  That might be strategic for the party, but it would be bad for democracy.

[Хahar 🤔]

Why would either candidate drop out?  The whole RCV system is created to avoid situations where we should have to worry about spoilers and thus there should be no pressure to drop out. 

Instant-runoff voting does not satisfy what Wikipedia (presumably following the academic literature) refers to as the independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion, and is thus still subject to spoiler candidates. It is important to recall here that Gross finished ahead of Peltola. Let's suppose that there are a significant number of Begich–Peltola–Palin–Gross voters. If Gross had stayed in the race and again outpolled Peltola, thereby eliminating her, then in a Palin–Gross final round those voters would have gone to Palin. In a Palin–Peltola final round, they instead go to Peltola.

Instant-runoff systems provide a strong incentive to vote strategically for more "electable" candidates. When candidates drop out in a system like this one, they ensure that voters will effectively have to vote strategically. If Gross viewed himself as less electable and prioritized electing a Democrat, then his choice to drop out has worked exactly as planned.

It's true that RCV doesn't satisfy IIA.  But almost all single-winner real-world voting systems fail to satisfy IIA, and RCV tends to do better on this than FPTP in the type of real-world situations we are likely to see.

I guess my sense is while Gross dropping out -might- be strategic for the Democratic party (although I'm skeptical there are a nontrivial number of people who rank Begich–Peltola–Palin–Gross), it seems antithetical to the intent of the reform, and contrary to the will of the voters. 

It's like if under the old system the Republican party held a primary where Palin beat Begich, and then the party just decided to cancel the result and make Begich their nominee because he was more "electable".  That might be strategic for the party, but it would be bad for democracy.

I realized after posting that you presumably know everything I said, so apologies if I sounded like I was talking down to you.

I guess where I differ from you is that I don't feel that politics is a game where the participants are bound to operate according to the rules. (I don't mean "game" in a pejorative sense here.) The purpose of Alaska Democrats is not to make sure that the political process operates according to the spirit of the law that was passed; it's to get Democrats elected to enact Democratic policies. To suggest otherwise is holding Alaskan political organizations to a standard that doesn't make sense anywhere else. For instance, in France, every legislative candidate whose vote is more than an eighth of all voters in the constituency advances to the second round, but usually in a three-way race the less electorally advantaged candidate will drop out. I don't think it's anti-democratic in any sense I care about for candidates who do not see a path to victory to remove themselves from consideration.

Obviously, as I've made clear, my opinion of this Alaskan system is quite low. In any case, we have plenty of cases in this  country where candidates drop out after being nominated (leaving the party to choose a successor) or parties choose to nominate candidates at a convention instead of a primary (in a similar manner to how candidates are nominated for office in nearly every other country). To the extent that we have an issue with democracy, I don't think it's that.

[Canis]

https://twitter.com/Alaskans4BE/status/1564993714409570305

[Stuart98]

https://twitter.com/GalenMetzger1/status/1565059833128054784?t=KJaMZFDKOHYOZtIoD...

4000 uncounted votes remain. We don't know where most of these came from; they probably are favorable to Peltola but we don't know for sure.

[Adam Griffin]

https://twitter.com/GalenMetzger1/status/1565059833128054784?t=KJaMZFDKOHYOZtIoD...

4000 uncounted votes remain. We don't know where most of these came from; they probably are favorable to Peltola but we don't know for sure.

https://twitter.com/GalenMetzger1/status/1565070252471267328

[Holmes]

I'm confused. The AK Elections site shows about 191.8k total votes cast. The total between the three candidates + write ins is about 188k. So that discrepancy (+ the 904 in cinyc's tweet) is the questioned ballots, right? And not all of them will be counted because reasons?

[Adam Griffin]

I'm confused. The AK Elections site shows about 191.8k total votes cast. The total between the three candidates + write ins is about 188k. So that discrepancy (+ the 904 in cinyc's tweet) is the questioned ballots, right? And not all of them will be counted because reasons?

https://twitter.com/GalenMetzger1/status/1565076457293881347

https://twitter.com/GalenMetzger1/status/1565072355465916416

https://twitter.com/DjsokeSpeaking/status/1565069663394037766

[wbrocks67]

okay... well then how many are actually left then

[Adam Griffin]

okay... well then how many are actually left then

https://twitter.com/cinyc9/status/1565070015191187457

https://twitter.com/CuriousHenryPol/status/1565067280844836868

[Holmes]

Honestly I’m just gonna wait another 2.5 hours and then we’ll know.

[wbrocks67]

Honestly I’m just gonna wait another 2.5 hours and then we’ll know.

This. If there's another 900 ballots, cool, even better for Peltola. But we might as well just wait to see what happens at this point

[Boobs]

Wow, very DESPERATE and disgusting move by “Killer” Mike DONE-leavy to throw out 3,100 LEGITIMATE Peltola votes! Republicans are SCRAMBLING (because they are in DISARRAY) to futilely stop the oncoming Blue Tsunami!! #PELTOLA2022 #PELTOLA2024 #PELTOLA2026 #PELTOLA2028 #PELTOLA2030  not implying anything, just saying

[Ferguson97]

https://twitter.com/AlaskaDemocrats/status/1565017038359506945

Kinda messed up for Alaska to do this on her birthday, gonna ruin it for her if she loses

[Progressive Pessimist]

https://twitter.com/iris_samuels/status/1564753716540223489

That sounds as awkward as when a winner is named in Miss America, or a reality competition show, or something.

That's actually how every UK Parliamentary election winner is announced.

It still sounds uncomfortable to watch.

No, it's amazing and it's a pity results of US House elections don't have announcement proclamations with as much gravitas.

https://twitter.com/iris_samuels/status/1564753716540223489

That sounds as awkward as when a winner is named in Miss America, or a reality competition show, or something.

That's actually how every UK Parliamentary election winner is announced.

It still sounds uncomfortable to watch.

It actually can be really interesting as you get people like Lord Buckethead on the same stage as Theresa May. Very egalitarian if you ask me

That is amusing, but we don't have Santa Claus among the other three who placed. That's what would make this amusing to me.

[beaver2.0]

Well this live stream is a disappointment.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Peltola won!

[GALeftist]

I THINK PELTOLA WON HOLY

[Zenobiyl]

Holy sh**t

[soundchaser]

YES

RED WAVE CANCELED

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

BLUELASKA

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Is 51.5% - 48.5% the final result?

[Pollster]

Best not to extrapolate anything nationally from this due to the RCV quirks, but a very strong data point that candidate quality is indeed harming the GOP this year.

[Oryxslayer]

Is 51.5% - 48.5% the final result?

No, they will run again after certification adds the couple hundred votes added a minute ago, but that can't close a margin of several thousand.

Also:



The Detailed report. A little over 20% of Begich's votes exhausted, Peltola got a bit over 35% of his transferred votes.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Let’s hope we can keep this up in November! That’s what’ll really matter - especially if Begich gets second place in the general.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Let’s hope we can keep this up in November! That’s what’ll really matter - especially if Begich gets second place in the general.

We will Ryan and Beasley both will win