The New Voting System that Gave Democrats a GOP House Seat is Dangerous. Here’s Why

Alaska’s sole congressional seat, which had been in GOP hands for 49 years, was recently captured by Democrat Mary Peltola.

The victory has been touted by liberals as either vindication of their agenda or as portending the end of the career of Sarah Palin, Peltola’s most high-profile opponent. Yet the result, which took weeks to finalize, was easily explainable:

It was a function of Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting (RCV) and Top-four Primary (TFP) system — a system electoral engineers would like to institute nationwide.

In essence, this system created a situation in which Palin and another Republican, Nick Begich, were both running against Peltola in the general election and divided up the GOP vote.

Before explaining the real problem with RCV and TFP, let’s review what they are. Per Ballotpedia:

A ranked-choice voting system (RCV) is an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he…is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the next-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process is

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