There was some amusement in the headlines today, after the announcement that there will not just be one but actually two Dan Sullivans on the general election ballot in the Senate race in Alaska. But many of these articles missed a very key point, which is that the Alaska election system pretty much guarantees that this will not mean one of them will somehow spoil the chances of the other one. In the end, it is likely not going to matter at all to the result of the race.

Alaska has a hybrid system of conducting elections, which pairs the best of two schemes in a way that no other state has attempted. I've long been a big fan of their setup, because it works so well to avoid any attempts to game the system. They hold a "jungle" primary, where all candidates regardless of party affiliation appear on the same ballot. Unlike in California, however, the top four candidates (instead of the top two) advance to the general election. Having a top-two system invites all sorts of mischief, which I have complained about before (where a Democratic candidate might spend money to boost a Republican candidate's chances, for instance). Making it a top-four system generally avoids all of that.

In the general election, the four remaining candidates are presented on an instant-runoff or ranked-choice ballot. Voters are able to rank the candidates in order, by marking down their first, second, and third choices. If the first round of vote-counting doesn't produce a winner with a simple majority (of over 50 percent), then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed among the other three candidates according to the voters' rankings (their second-choice picks, in other words). If there still isn't a winner with a majority, then a second recount happens with only two candidates left to choose from (which guarantees one will win a majority).

It sounds more complicated than it is. And because it is a hybrid system, it avoids the problem ranked-choice voting can have when there is a large number of candidates on the ballot (which can lead to multiple recounts and drag on for quite a while). With only four candidates, only three counts are even possible.

The news today was that the third candidate to advance from the jungle primary was announced. The two major candidates -- incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola -- were announced on the night of the election, because between them they had the lion's share of the votes (over 90 percent of the total). There were many other names on the ballot who got tinier and tinier shares of the vote, and they were all so close to each other that it wasn't clear who would win the third and fourth spots on the general election ballot. But now we know that Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. will advance, after getting 2.5 percent of the votes. The fourth-place slot is still in question, with two candidates within 43 votes of each other (both at 1.1 percent of the total vote).

If Alaska had an election system that pronounced that the candidate who got the most votes wins even if they didn't get a majority (which is used in most other states), then this might be a problem. People might not realize they were voting for the "wrong" Dan Sullivan, and thereby "waste" their vote. The sitting Senator Sullivan might lose just enough votes for the Democrat to beat him, to put it another way, because of people who thought they were voting for him but in reality voted for a different Dan Sullivan. Far too many news articles made it sound like this would be possible in Alaska. Today's Washington Post article on the race included this paragraph, for instance:

Wednesday's result could add to Republican concerns about the competitive Senate race in November, in which having two candidates of the same name could split support for the incumbent and benefit [Mary] Peltola.

This is not likely to happen, though. Think about it. If a voter wants to vote for the Republican candidate, then they're likely not going to vote for the Democratic candidate, right? So they'll rank both Dan Sullivans above Mary Peltola on their ballots. And in the end it doesn't even really matter which one they rank first.

Let's say that Peltola gets 48 percent of the first-round votes. Let's also say that incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan gets only 47 percent in the first round, with the other Dan Sullivan pulling in 4 percent. If all the people who voted for the "wrong" Dan Sullivan marked both Dan Sullivans as their number one and two choices, then the incumbent will eventually win with 51 percent of the vote. The only way this wouldn't work out is if Peltola gets more than 50 percent before the second or third round of counting -- but that would mean it still wouldn't have mattered if the voters had marked the "right" Dan Sullivan anyway, because he wouldn't have had enough votes no matter what.

So there really is no reason for hand-wringing or pearl-clutching from the pundits. If this were happening in any other state, then they'd be right to be worried, because having two candidates with the same name on the ballot might indeed lead to mistaken votes -- and even a few percentage points of such mistakes could indeed swing the race. But the ranked-choice system avoids this "spoiler effect" -- as long as the voters mark both Dan Sullivans higher than Peltola (which you would assume that they would do). Any "mistaken" votes would then wind up in the "right" Dan Sullivan's column anyway.

Sure, it is amusing to have two Dan Sullivans on the same ballot. It certainly appears to be some form of trickery, at first glance. But most Alaska voters have already figured it out -- Senator Dan S. Sullivan got 42.1 percent of the primary votes, while Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. managed only 2.5 percent. But no matter how many of the 3,829 votes Daniel J. got were cast mistakenly, it won't matter in the ranked-choice general election -- because they will all likely wind up in the "right" Dan Sullivan's total.

So it is certainly quirky to note that there will be two Dan Sullivans on the Alaska Senate ballot, but the Alaskan election system is already up to this challenge. Reporters writing about this race need to take a deep breath and calm down and think the whole thing through before predicting some sort of trickery in the final outcome.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant