Critics ridicule Tom Cotton over complaints about Sarah Palin results

Arkansas Republican faces heat for sudden concern about will of the voters

A Republican from Arkansas faced ridicule on social media after his reaction to Wednesday night’s election results in Alaska showed a sudden concern for the will of the voters.

The whole snafu originated on Wednesday evening with the loss of Sarah Palin, the Trump-backed candidate, for Alaska’s open US House seat. Ms Palin survived the first round of Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting procedure, which was used for the first time this cycle, but was defeated by Mary Peltola in the second round. Ms Peltola will become the first Democrat to represent the state in the US House in 50 years.

That didn’t sit well with Mr Cotton, who tweeted: “Ranked-choice voting is a scam to rig elections.”

Not content with that declaration, he went on.

“60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat ’won,’” protested the senator.

60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat "won."

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 1, 2022

As you’d expect, Mr Cotton’s view of the situation is skewed in favour of his chosen candidate.

Ms Palin isn’t in office because a majority of Alaska voters preferred Ms Peltola to her. Mathematically speaking it’s hard to imagine that the result would have been different with another voting system. While 60 per cent of voters, roughly, supported Ms Palin or her fellow Republican Nick Begich, it’s clear from the ranked choice system that many of Mr Begich’s voters simply would prefer to vote for Ms Peltola rather than Ms Palin — despite potentially having to cross party lines to do so.

In fact, for all of Mr Cotton’s bluster, Ms Palin trailed her Democratic opponent significantly in the first round of voting, and had Mr Begich’s supporters not been redistributed she would have still lost by nearly 20,000 votes. The final vote was much more competitive only due to that ranked-choice system. In a standard system, Mr Begich’s campaign would have simply split the vote from Ms Palin and made her efforts to overtake Ms Peltola even more difficult.

Mr Cotton’s comments were further ridiculed on Twitter, where commenters questioned why Republicans suddenly cared about overall vote totals given that their candidates for the presidency haven’t won the popular vote since 2004.

“Wait til you learn who got the most votes in the 2016 election,” quipped Tim Ryan, a writer with the right-leaning Bulwark publication.

“So you support abolishing the electoral college?” others tweeted.

“Begich or Palin was free to drop out at any time and consolidate GOP support,” another noted.

Still others questioned why Mr Cotton was commenting about rightful election results at all after supporting Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen.

“Oh, so now you think a majority of voters should decide who wins an election, got it,” one snidely remarked.