Republicans Are Freaking Out About Sarah Palin's Election Loss

After Sarah Palin lost her bid for a House seat from Alaska this week, Republicans started losing their minds. They claimed that the ranked choice voting system in place in Alaska was a way to "steal elections." In reality, this system is far more fair for the voters, and Palin just happened to be a hugely unpopular candidate heading into the race. Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Well folks, one of the biggest news stories of this week, not involving somebody whose last name is Trump is Sarah Palin who lost her election officially this week because of ranked choice voting or that's at least the way the Republicans are trying to spin it, including Republican Senator Tom cotton, who claims that ranked choice voting is just another scam for Democrats to allegedly steal elections. Sarah Palin of course, was left in a bit of a state of shock after losing this election, that she was so certain she was gonna win, but darn those Democrats and there pesky ranked choice voting, um, here's the thing the state of Alaska actually passed a voter approved resolution, instituting ranked choice voting in the state. And because Alaska is actually a, a red state, that means that the Republicans are the ones who instituted ranked choice voting. That of course prevented Sarah Palin from becoming a member of the house of representatives being defeated by Democrat Mary PTO.

Now this seat that Palin was fighting for had been held by Republican Don young for many, many years. So flipping it, blue might be one of the only accomplishments that Sarah Palin actually has to her name at this point. And for anybody, by the way, who is not familiar with rank choice voting, because of course it is not something that is very common here in the United States, though. It should be. Here's basically how it works. In a nutshell, you have all your candidates on the ballot voters go in and instead of picking one person that they wanna vote for, they pick, well, they rank them 1, 2, 3, 4 in that order. So when it comes time to count the votes, cuz this election took place a couple weeks ago, what they do is if no candidate has more than 50% of the vote, they take the person in last place and kick 'em off.

So everybody who voted for that person, they then have their second choice. So their vote goes to the second choice. Once again, if nobody hits the 50% mark, they do the same thing, lowest person out next choice goes to the next person and so on and so forth. If a candidate hits more than 50% in the first election ranks, don't matter, that person wins. It actually gives everybody a more clear voice in elections by saying, okay, well if my favorite person can't get it, then maybe my second person can, what it does actually. According to Republican representative, Adam Kininger is it prevents the extremes of the party from taking over elections, which of course is what would've happened. Had Sarah Palin been victorious, but as Tom cotton said, quote, 60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted

Process and ballot exhaustion, which disenfranchises voters a Democrat won. Nope. I mean, yes, a Democrat did win obviously, but uh, it didn't disenfranchise anybody. That is a very stupid statement from a very stupid man, which is what Tom cotton is. As I mentioned, even Adam Kininger a fellow Republican came out and trashed cotton for the remark, but so did Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican party who tweeted out quote wrong again, Tom would love to see your tweet of Palin had won and exactly how does rank choice voting rig elections. Again, typical BS, clap trap and no facts defeat. It's a real thing, Tom doesn't get any more sternly worded than that, but here's the thing. Sarah Palin was a bad candidate. Sarah Palin, believe it or not. According to every poll for several years is actually a very unpopular person in the state of Alaska.

You know, the fact that she even came in second was a bit surprising because multiple polls, again, over the last couple years have shown that her approval rating in Alaska is underwater. Most voters who talk to reporters this year, Republican voters say that yeah, Palin abandoned us. She quit halfway through her only term in office to go host a reality TV show that nobody even watched got canceled after one season. And look, there's a lot of reality shows out there. And if you can't hack it on one, I think that says a lot about your popularity.