Inside the novel voting system that could sink Palin’s comeback bid

Though ranked choice elections can take time to tabulate — Alaska’s about-to-be-decided special election was held more than two weeks ago, with mail ballots filtering in slowly since then — it’s pretty simple on the front end. Voters rank candidates in order of preference instead of just picking one. If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the remaining ballots are reallocated from the lowest-performing finishers to second or third choices until one hopeful secures more than half the vote.

The system become a favorite of election reformers looking for ways to boost less extreme office-seekers. In Alaska, ranked choice voting has opened the chance that the bomb-throwing conservative Palin could lose the state’s special House election.

And an expensive campaign is underway to bring the system to Nevada, the perennial battleground state. It’s the latest step in a growing push around the country to implement ranked choice voting in cities and states — a change that could have a profound impact on the type of candidates voters send to city halls, state governments and Washington, D.C.

A ballot measure going before Nevada voters this fall that would impose a similar system to Alaska’s. All candidates would run in one open primary under the proposal, with the top five contenders regardless of party advancing to a ranked choice general election.