RANKED-CHOICE VOTING DIED YESTERDAY

So Alaska will now send a Democrat to the House:

Democrat Mary Peltola is projected to win the Alaska special general election for the state’s sole House seat....

Peltola defeated two Republicans -- former Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich -- and will be the first Democrat to represent the state in the House in nearly half a century....

This was the first House election in the state to use ranked-choice voting (RCV), which became Alaska's election method after it was approved in a state referendum in 2020. Peltola won because many Begich voters didn't like Palin:

Peltola took 40 percent of the first-choice votes to Palin’s 31 percent and Begich’s 28.5 percent. But given that Alaska is a red state and that both Palin and Begich are Republicans, it stood to reason Palin should pick up most of his voters. Nearly 6 in 10 voters picked a Republican first, after all.

In the end she did, but barely — and not nearly enough. Almost as many Begich voters picked Peltola as their second choice (15,445) or didn’t rank one of the two finalists (11,222) as ranked Palin behind Begich (27,042). In other words, only about half of Begich voters were willing to also rank Palin ahead of a Democrat.

That's how RCV tends to work -- it winnows out extremist candidates and favors more moderate ones. Which explains why Republicans, who have gone all in on radicalism for many years, are flipping out. Here's Senator Tom Cotton:

Ranked-choice voting is a scam to rig elections.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 1, 2022

And here's Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:

The Gateway Pundit previously reported earlier this month that Republicans in Alaska passed rank-choice voting in 2020. This confusing system is only being pushed by RINOS and radicals in conservative red states. It allows Democrats to even the playing field when they have no chance of winning.

Republicans also passed mail-in voting.

These Republican lawmakers in state after state are straight from hell!

ALASKA IS LOST!

... These new rule changes will ensure the state becomes the next Oregon or California.

Tyler Bowyer, who's affiliated with Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, has been fulminating against RCV for weeks:

RCV is anti democracy. The will of the voter is completely lost

— Tyler Bowyer 🇺🇸 (@tylerbowyer) August 31, 2022

RCV would eliminate primaries, a total upheaval of our system— & would give power & control to a singular amorphous group without any Democratic-Republican check & balance from the traditional party construct. It’s the most radical change ever conceived ever in American History.

— Tyler Bowyer 🇺🇸 (@tylerbowyer) August 30, 2022

This is what we will have if you let Ranked Choice Voting and Independent Redistricting Commissions into your state. pic.twitter.com/ZppwaELgM5

— Tyler Bowyer 🇺🇸 (@tylerbowyer) August 30, 2022

When I asked Bowyer how he arrived at the preposterous conclusion that Tennessee (where Donald Trump won two years ago by 23 points) and Utah (where Trump won by 20) were a few mere election reforms away from turning blue, he replied:

ID & UT have been overtaken by CA politics. SLC & Boise already have lost to leftists. RCV will eliminate conservatives, trad Republican areas will be moderated, weak and dem areas will hand keys over to progressive radicals. Because of pop size, they won’t be able to stop it.

— Tyler Bowyer 🇺🇸 (@tylerbowyer) August 30, 2022

This is lunacy. Liberalism in Boise and Salt Lake City hasn't made those states even vaguely purple. The states won't be taken over by "progressive radicals," no matter how elections are conducted.

But RCV does seem to make it harder for extremists to win, and since extremists dominate the GOP, Republicans fear RCV. And so they're going to bamboozle their voters into believing that RCV is one of those devious ways Democrats cheat to win elections, even though the procedures under RCV are completely transparent and legal. For Republicans, anything that causes them to lose winnable elections is cheating.

Which means that except in very blue states and cities, ranked-choice voting is dead in America now. "RCV is election fraud" will now be a frequent talking point on Fox News. GOP officeholders and candidates will talk about RCV the way they talk about allowing undocumented immigrants to vote. They'll unite in opposition to RCV wherever they have the numbers to block it. They'll persuade all GOP voters that RCV is evil and is part of the Democrat socialist globalist Soros Antifa BLM CRT plan to steal America from its rightful right-wing owners. Reformers won't be able to expand the use of RCV, nor will aspiring third parties (sorry, Andrew Yang). RCV is dead, and success -- plus the GOP's commitment to extremism -- killed it.