[wnoise]

> Under Australian rules voters who ranked Begich first would have had their second choices promoted to first and added to the respective candidates. In this case ~27k for Palin and ~15.5k for Peltola. Then the totals are compared.

Exactly what happened. Palin was a spoiler -- had she not run, Begich would ha e won instead.

> One thing though is that on Australian ballots all candidates must be ranked.

That's kind of ridiculous. It's quite unwieldy and leads to many spoiled ballots. And I don't think forcing ordering past the point of caring really changes anything.