McConnell versus the MAGA Republicans of Alaska, who censure him
I believe the censure is deserved – not that McConnell cares:
On Monday, the [Alaska] state Republican central committee announced the results of an overwhelming vote to admonish the national party leader over attack ads against Kelly Tshibaka, the candidate endorsed by the Alaska GOP who is challenging incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The final vote came to 49-8 in favor of a resolution censuring McConnell and the minority leader’s Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) which has pumped more than $5 million into the race to defend a key McConnell ally in the upper chamber.
Murkowski is probably the biggest RINO in the Senate, except perhaps for Mitt Romney.
“No one from Alaska wants big shots from the Lower 48 meddling in our elections, and they certainly don’t want D.C. Republicans lying about the candidate who’s been endorsed by the Alaska GOP,” Mary Ann Pruitt, an advisor to Tshibaka, told The Federalist. “Alaska Republicans are telling Mitch McConnell to stay out of it. But this goes to show you who Lisa Murkowski is aligned with.
Anyone who’s been paying attention for the past six years or more knows who Murkowski is aligned with. If not, this recent development should inform them:
On Friday, Murkowski endorsed the state’s Democrat Congresswoman Mary Peltola in the state’s House race over former Republican governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, the other Republican in the contest…
Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, put in place by Murkowski operatives to avoid a competitive primary, opened the door for a Democrat to win the at-large House race.
McConnell has also pulled Senate Leadership Fund money from Masters in Arizona and Bolduc in New Hampshire, who are both behind in polls but very close to their opponents.
In Alaska, I would assume that McConnell’s excuse would be that Murkowski is ahead of Tshibaka in the polls and therefore the better candidate. However, Murkowski is only slightly ahead in most polls, with a couple of outliers in which she’s very ahead. The Democrat is far behind both of them, so the race appears to be between the two of them, but ranked-choice voting complicates things somewhat and it’s likely neither will reach the 50% threshold in the first round of voting. Here’s an article from one month ago saying the two are basically tied:
This election cycle marks the first time that Alaska voters are using the ranked-choice system, in which voters rank candidates and more than 50 percent of the total vote is needed to win. If no one reaches a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the voters’ next choice in subsequent rounds. The AARP poll, which imitated the voting system, asked likely voters to select their first-, second-, third- and fourth-choice candidates.
Respondents favored Tshibaka (43 percent) over Murkowski (35 percent) in the poll’s first round of voting, but both candidates polled at 50 percent by the final round.
Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, put in place by Murkowski operatives to avoid a competitive primary, opened the door for a Democrat to win the at-large House race.
This is a tactic to defeat the voters in favor of a Swamp member. Palin began her career by beating Lisa’s father Frank.
In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary.[80][81] Her running mate was State Senator Sean Parnell. She was then elected in the general election.
Hence the spite from Murkowski.
It’s hard to doubt Ace’s theory that Mitch greatly prefers being a polite RINO minority leader to having a solid GOP majority where he’d most likely not be leader. He’s always been a fairly perfidious creature at heart. Although I grudgingly give him credit for keeping Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court.
Should the best of the young Republican candidates (Masters and Vance, as well as Kent in WA) prevail next month (although one should bear in mind that what counts is not who votes, but who collects and who counts the votes), it will be a much-needed rebuke to McCarthy, McConnell, and to R. McDaniel, as the newly-minted stars of the conservative movement (Kari Lake, perhaps, foremost amongst them, but certainly including The Notorious MTG) will have no more use for the feckless and spineless old guard than for the loathsome Never-Trumpers such as Cheney and Kinzinger.
Ideally you have the following:
1. A stock check of the voter roll in each of the state’s subdivisions, conducted by the staff of the local board of elections, with all operations conducted by two-person teams, one Republican clerk and one Democratic clerk. A stock check of the whole database might be conducted on a quadrennial, biennial, or annual cycle. Portions of each year would be blocked off for stock check and to each portion of the year and alphabetically delineated segment of the database would be checked. That segment would be checked at the same point in every cycle, whether the cycle was annual, biennial, or quadrennial. Every hard copy voter registration card would be compared to entries in databases maintained by the state department of corrections, the state department of revenue, the secretary of state, and the secretariat of the courts. The card of anyone provisionally removed from the database would be transferred to a separate cabinet so dedicated and a postcard of notification sent to the voter in question. If the voter failed to contact the board and offer an explanation of any anomalies or if they failed to file an updated registration form, they’d be removed from the roll. Newly received registration forms would be subject each workday to a flow check against these same state databases.
2. The voter roll in each locality would be published twice per year, once the last Friday in March, once the first Friday in September. These would be snapshots of the roll as it was on those dates. The March publication would be a list of those eligible to cast ballots in elections held in May and August and to affix valid signatures to designating petitions due in mid-July. The latter would be the roll of those eligible to vote in November and to affix valid signatures to deisgnating petitions due the following January.
3. The board of elections in each locality would at the time of the March publication classify every electoral constituency due to hold elections over the succeeding 12 months according to competitiveness. This presumes party-preference registration. If the party with the largest number of registrants exceeds that of the runner up by a margin of > 2:1, the constituency is deemed ‘non-competitive’.
4. If a constituency is deemed ‘non-competitive’, ballot access is pursued and achieved by all aspirants through the circulation of designating petitions or the payment of a deposit. If it is deemed ‘competitive’, whether or not you make use of this pure-petition-or-deposit method is contingent on what office is at state and whether you wish to run as a candidate of an ‘official’ party, an ‘unofficial’ party, or no party. In regard to certain offices, e.g. judgeships, the pure petition method would always be used. In others, the ‘party nomination’ method would be used if the constituency was classified as ‘competitive’.
5. In a ‘party nomination’ contest, the non-partisan candidate will circulate a petition among the non-partisan registrants or place a deposit with the local board. The aspirant from an ‘unofficial’ party will circulate a petition among non-partisan voters or scrape together the funds for a deposit. Caucuses and conventions held for the constituency in question among dues-paying card-carrying members will be held in July to nominate candidates for the party. For such candidates to be placed on the ballot, a designating petition or deposit must be filed in mid-July. For official parties, caucuses and conventions to nominate candidates would be held in June. Any aspirant for a given office could compel a primary election to be held if he achieved sufficient performance metrics at the caucus or convention at which he competed. Should he register at the board of elections in question in x business days, the winner and all other candidates who achieved the metrics would be formally notified. The winner would be on the ballot unless he specifically asked to be removed; the others would be on the ballot if they specifically asked to be included. The primary would be held in August provided more than one candidate elected to compete.
6. I any primary election, there would be a single stereotyped ballot order on all ballots. The order of the candidates on the ballot would be a function of their performance at the caucus or convention in question. If there are just two competitors, you have a first-past-the-post contest. If you have three or more, you have a ranked-choice ballot with multi-round tabulation.
7. In any general election conducted in a constituency where the party-nomination method is used, you have a single stereotyped order on all ballots. The state’s political parties are rank-ordered according to their performance during the most recent elections to the lower house of the legislature held coincident with the gubernatorial election. Parties which did not participate in such elections would be next, with the precise order among them determined by lot. Non partisan candidates would be last, with the precise order among them determined by lot.
8. In any general election conducted consequent to the ‘pure petition’ method, there will be as many stereotypes as there are candidates who qualify for the ballot. Equal numbers of ballots are printed of each stereotype. Each voting precinct will receive a particular stereotype. The number of precincts who receive ballots of a given stereotype will be equal. In order to define the candidate order on each stereotype, do the following: pick a slip with each candidate’s name on it at out of a hat and place it on a daisy wheel. Pick a candidate and move round counter-clockwise and you have the order on one stereotype. Pick another and move round counter-clockwise, and you have a second stereotype. Do this for each aspirant. Each aspirant will have an equal chance to occupy the top spot, the second spot, intermediate spots, and the last spot on the ballots distributed (though, in any given precinct, the order on all the ballot papers will be the same). After each candidate’s name, you will see the name of the body of party registrants in which the candidate is enrolled and among whom his canvassers circulated the petition. As in “Sarah Palin [Republican]”. Aspirants from all bodies of registrants will be jumbled in one list, without being segregated by party.
McConnell should stay out of it, in deference to Alaska voters. It would be a benefit to the nation to trade Murkowski for Tshibaka.
Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, put in place by Murkowski operatives to avoid a competitive primary, opened the door for a Democrat to win the at-large House race.
Alaska’s system of multi-stage jungle primaries should be replaced. Ranked-choice is not the problem. The perverse outcome was a function of the multi-stage system.
You can have a party nomination system (where you have party primaries which lead to a general election with one candidate from each party) or a jungle system where you have all aspirants of all declared adherence on the general election ballot. One agreeable feature of ranked-choice is to avoid run-off elections. Alaska’s system instituted ranked-choice, then incorporated a runoff. It was an unnecessary complication. An appropriate procedure:
1. Rank order all candidates according to the number of 1st preference votes. Exclude from the tally any blank or spoiled ballots.
2. If no candidate receives a majority of the tally, you must eliminate candidates and reassign the ballot to a different candidate. The candidate you choose to reassign a ballot to will be the surviving candidate who occupies the highest rank on the ballot in question. If no surviving candidate is marked on the ballot, the ballot is excluded from the tally.
3. The surviving candidates on the 2d round of tabulation will be determined according to one of three rules. Chose the rule that allows you to eliminate the largest number of candidates. Rule 1: eliminate the caboose candidate; Rule 2: eliminate all candidates who failed to receive 2% of the tally on the first tabulation. Rule 3: locate a gap in the first preference tally between candidate ranked n and candidate ranked n+1 which is sufficiently large that the sum of first preference votes of all candidates after n+1 is less than the value of the gap. Then eliminate all candidates in the rank-order subsequent to rank n.
4. If, after two rounds of tabulation, no candidate has a majority of the tally, eliminate the caboose candidate and redistribute his ballots, excluding from the tally ballots where no surviving candidate is marked. Rinse, repeat, until someone receives a majority of the tally.
In the Alaska race which had the perverse results, you had 48 candidates qualifying for the ballot initially. That in and of itself indicates insufficient screening.
Better screen would be that the aspirant circulating in the body of registrants of an ‘official’ party receive valid signature from 2% of the registrants in that body. The body in which to circulate would be the body the candidate is registered at the time the voter roll is published; circulating in more than one body of registrants would be debarred. Candidates hoping to run under the banner of an ‘unofficial’ party or as non-partisan candidates would circulate among non-partisan registrants, with sufficiency being defined as valid signatures from 0.55% of those enrolled in that body of registrants. Circulators would have to be registered to vote in that body of registrants in that constituency or registered in that body somewhere in the state but graced with a license as a notary or commissioner of deeds.
An alternative would be to place a security deposit with the board of elections, to be refunded to you if you survive to the second round of tabulation (in a ranked-choice contest) or received 20% of the vote (in a first-past-the-post contest). The value of the deposit might be a function of the total personal income flow of the constituency in question as determined by census date. Say,
d = 2.5y / 1,000,000
where ‘y’ is the census determined personal income flow at this time. In Alaska at this time, the required deposit for a statewide contest would be about $30,000.
Note, in the Alaska 2022 special election, had they one popular ballot followed by multiple rounds of tabulation and using the system delineated above, they’d have required 10 rounds of tabulation. The first round would have eliminated the 38 candidates who scored less than 2% of the tally. The surviving candidates would have included 5 Republicans, 3 non-partisan candidates, and 2 Democrats. The sum total of non-Republican votes amounted to 42.2% of the total. Even had Mary Pelota (D) won every last one by the penultimate tally, she could only have been elected if a critical mass of Republican voters added her as a subsequent preference or abstained from adding Palin, Begich, or Sweeney to their preference list.
In the actual balloting, on the final tabulation Gov. Palin received about 27,000 transferred votes from Begich voters, Pelota received 16,000, and 9,000 listed no subsequent preference. Had those abstaining voters broken 7-2 for Governor Palin, she’d have won.
why do progs do things, for the worse result, they wanted to steal the seat for pelosi, which is a further injury to the body politic, frankly I think palin is owed for all the sacrifices, that her family has born, because she spoke truth to power, about obama, physical attacks on her family, on her church, vile insinuations against her character, crushing misuse of the ethics reform to bankrupt her, mcconnell enabled this same strategem back in 2010, against joe miller, in concert with the management of the alaska daily news, which became a long form of slander, for several years,
peltoia shuts down the pipeline, is against personal defense, and a confirmed moloch worshiper, thats all I would need to know
I would think if one were to take a possum,teach him English, give him a haircut, and a smartly tailored little three piece gray flannel suit, and send him to Washington, he would be a better Senator than Lisa Murkowski.
Possums are very discerning roll team possum
Art Deco making three posts in favor of ranked choice that actually demonstrate how stupid and complicated ranked choice is. *chef’s kiss*
Mike
What was the pressing need for this change, at this point when murkowski by moving haaland out of committee killed alaskas energy future not to mention her crimes against justice and defense of the nation garland mayorkas austin
I don’t know if you have a potty-mouth filter on your comment section, but there is no other way to describe this ranked-choice voting scam other than to say it is complete and utter bullshit.
Nope, Bunge just demonstrated that he can’t follow an argument beyond middle school level.
Don’t be a Bunge.
Art Deco making three posts in favor of ranked choice that actually demonstrate how stupid and complicated ranked choice is. *chef’s kiss*
There were three posts. The first concerned preparation of the voter roll, classification of constituencies and contests as to whether you make use of party primaries to winnow candidates for the general election or whether you have a free-for-all among all aspirants, and modes by which you nominate and designate candidates. The third post was an addendum on modes of designating candidates. All of these are concerns without regard to the tabulation method you use. First past the post / ranked-choice / d’Hont PR, doesn’t matter. You have to have procedures for assembling the voter roll and designating candidates for the ballot.
The second post, which was about 400 words long, actually concerned methods of tabulating a ranked-choice contest. It went over your head, but not because the method is complicated.
I don’t know if you have a potty-mouth filter on your comment section, but there is no other way to describe this ranked-choice voting scam other than to say it is complete and utter bullshit.
If you had an actual complaint rather than an irritable mental gesture, we’d have heard the complaint.
Alaska is a very different place from the rest of the country. We really feel separate from the “Lower 48”. The attack ads against Tshbaka are flat out stupid and insulting to us. “Likely” committing fraud isn’t committing fraud. And it’s common for people being moved up here to get huge moving bonuses as an incentive. In the latest ad Tshbaka is accused of violating fishing regs at the end of the ad a fish is slapped down-a bass, which we don’t have here. Oddly enough, we don’t go for attack ads in Alaska. And we hate outsiders meddling. These ads may have the opposite result than intended.