How’s this for ridiculous: Lori Trahan apparently won the agonizingly close Merrimack Valley Congressional Democratic primary, despite recording only 21.6 percent of the vote. The second-place finisher, Dan Koh, who was considering his recount options on Wednesday, finished 52 votes behind, according to unofficial results.

Bottom line: The Third Congressional District’s Democratic nominee won with less than one-quarter of the primary electorate. More than 40,000 voters supported one of the other eight candidates.

It’s hard to imagine a better advertisement for ranked-choice voting than this race, which featured an unusually diverse, high-caliber field. In a ranked-choice system, voters mark a first choice, a second choice, and so forth. If a candidate earns more than 50 percent of first-choice votes, the election is over. But in a case like the Third District, where no candidate reaches a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are redistributed according to the second choices voters marked on their ballots, until a candidate hits 50 percent.