It was also a key test of ranked-choice voting, a process designed to more accurately reflect voters’ intent while making it harder for extremists to use division and blind partisanship to win.
This time it appears, happily, to have worked.
Palin was chosen as John McCain’s running mate in 2008 to bring youth and charisma to a Republican presidential ticket that needed it.
She quickly proved herself intellectually inadequate for the job, but with disturbing talents for disinformation and demagoguery.
Her claim that Obamacare would usher in “death panels” was awarded PolitiFact’s 2009 Lie of the Year.
In that sense, this was a living example of how ranked-choice voting helps foster bipartisanship and diffuse extremism.
And it’s why Missouri organizers, who tried and failed to get such a system on the ballot this year, should keep trying. »