The Latest from the Election Hand Count – A Flipped Race & Other Anomalies
Hand Recount Leads To Flipped Race in One Precinct, Other Anomalies. Municipal Clerk’s Office Forced To Count Again
Hand Counting Plagued with Rampant Errors, No Clear Procedures, Security Breaches; Still Not Following Municipal Code
Anchorage, AK — The Municipal Clerk’s office announced in Media Advisory 15 that the hand count will continue Wednesday at 1:00 pm. The Advisory states that this will be a count of already hand-recounted precincts and that the results need to be “clarified.” In truth, this count is happening because observers from the Election Hand Recount Application Signers discovered that the results for certain races did not match the Accu-Vote counts and pointed this out to the Municipal Clerk on Friday and Monday.
These are not the first problems. On the first day of counting, Wednesday May 9th, the tally sheets were all off because the incorrect ballots were pulled from the ballot storage closet. In truth, there has not been one single day of the hand count when where at least some of the races if not entire precincts required additional counting due to inaccurate and inconsistent counting procedures:
1) According to members of the Election Board, there was no direction forthcoming from the Municipal Clerk’s Office on how to count the ballots for the hand recount. Therefore, each team of two ballot counters (unlike the four-person teams the State of Alaska uses) was forced to come up with their own counting method.
2) When it was pointed out to the Municipal Clerk multiple times by multiple observers that one team was plagued with errors, that team returned to count the next day and the next, bringing with them the same errors.
3) In precinct 925, Huffman Elementary, their hand count even flipped a race (Proposition 1 – ASD school bond).
4) The Election Hand Recount Application Signers have maintained from the beginning our concern that the teams were counting facsimile ballots rather than the originals from which the election board copies the information to scan it into the machine. This opens up a Pandora’s Box of potential inaccuracy and security breeches. A written comment on the tally sheet from an election board member counting Hanshew 830 stated that a facsimile ballot “did not match” the original.
5) The Municipality has so far refused to count the unused ballots. They have not provided them for visual inspection.
6) There are rampant security lapses.
a) Hanshew 830 had a note on the tally sheet that there was no “seal” on the ballot container when they started counting.
b) Hand Count Observers watched in shock on Monday while a Municipal Clerk Office employee entered the “ballot vault” in room 155 all alone with no other employee present. (Photo attached after she exited with documents, leaving the door open) We had been assured by Barbara Gruenstein that no fewer than two employees ever entered.
7) The counting teams start a precinct with a tally sheet that has the Accu-Vote total marked at the top.
8) The hand recount continues to violate the “Rule of Law”:
a) The Municipal Clerk compared the count to the Accu-Vote totals rather than the signed register, as is also required in AMC28.90.040 “The election board shall check the number of ballots cast in a precinct against the registers…”
b) Assembly Chair Ernie Hall and Municipal Attorney Dennis Wheeler have not replied to either of Hal Gazaway’s letters as to whether they will do the recount of the absentee & questioned ballots required in AMC28.90.040. “…and shall check questioned and absentee ballotsvoted against questioned and absentee ballots distributed.”
3) No one in the Municipality has responded to the group’s records request that submitted with our recall application on May 2nd, nor have we received any explanation for the delay, as required in AMC3.90.060: “If the records and information cannot be located in time to make a response within two working days of the request, the requesting party shall be promptly advised, and, if the requesting party still desires the information or records, a reasonable and diligent search shall be made for it.”
The counting reconvenes this afternoon at 1:00 pm, City Hall Rm 155.
What about the Carter Center? At least they know how to observe elections in third-world countries — the moral-equivalent of a third world country aka Anchorage ….
Alaska Pi, what is DCCED for those of us far removed from the actual location?
Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. =DCCED
The division which does most of the community work is DCRA.
DCRA=Division of Community and Regional Affairs
The link I put in the comment above goes to Div of Elections (overseen by Lt Gov’s office) and within it is a link for people to contact someone in DCRA
with questions about local elections.
http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/lga/regoffices.htm
Sounds like the recount needs a recount.
Great sentiment Pinwheel, I hope many others join with you and collectively institute a legal challenge. That seems to be your only chance.
This is not going well. Yes I am aiming at understatement of the year.
Has no one explored the avenues of legal recourse to have this farce nullified?
I realize that in AK the government from top to bottom appears to be corrupt at worst or hopelessly incompetent at best. So far as I can tell this has not hit the radar anywhere in the lower 48, is there
no one at all in AK with outside contacts in the MSM who still have vestiges of ethical journalistic standards?
Is everyone in Anchorage suffering from chronic brain freeze from the winter?
If this situation is not properly addressed there will be at least two serious consequences over and above the already serious consequences represented by the election results. One will be an even greater disaffection and lack of enthusiasm on the part of the electorate. The fraud will be even easier the next time. Two is that there will be even more fraud the next time. If you reinforce malfeasance there will be more malfeasance. And it will be even more brazen. Can you really afford to let that happen?
There is one more irony in all this. If it was “liberals” pulling these kinds of stunts and blundering everything so badly that an unrehearsed clown act would look like Cirque d’ Soleil by comparison you can bet the soverign citizens, the militias, the secessionists, the survivalists, would be in the streets, with their small arms and body armor, screaming bloody murder.
I don’t mean to be just critical, but I must admit I am a little flumoxed that there has not been more outcry and protest of this folly.
So I will ask a couple of constructive questions which might go to the question of whether this ‘election’ was a fraud.
Has anyone compared the presincts where security seals were broken with the demographics of those presincts?
Has anyone verified the several ways in which the chain of custody for ballots has been broken and then documented it?
Has anyone verified and documented that the number of ballots actually printed was the same as the number claimed.
Has anyone verified and documented the number of unused ballots and where they are?
Has there been any investigation at all into why ballot containers were found without seals?
Has there been any effort to confirm that facsimilie ballots were correctly transcribed?
Has anyone raised the question of if the counting machines were compromised in the first place, why would they be used for the “hand recount”?
I could keep this up for another hour I think without looking up a single past post on this blog.
Most people don’t have a clue about what is happening because main stream media is barely surviving and hasn’t been told to report on this issue. And God forbid that the quote a real journalist like those reporting om Mudflats as a source.
Heard a report on local public station this morning but was outside and only caught a portion. They were interviewing Linda.
I only caught part, too, but thanks to KSKA for remaining the best source of news in town. Please support our local station if you can.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been following this story and have been reading about voting rights, rules, regulations and when the courts have had to get involved in regards to federal and state elections. The constitution is straight forward about spelling out who has the right to vote and who does not through the various amendents over the years. What it does not spell out is how the votes are to be taken, counted and verified, it leaves all those details up to each state. So Alaska has determined its own voting procedures and accountability process and thus its own judge and jury to determine if anyone’s voting rights have been squished like a bug. Because this is “only” a city election then the process of judicial review, hearings and consquences has to start on the local level and move up through the courts before the feds get involved. One of the biggest missing factors in this case is that Gov. Zero has yet to ask the DA to look into the matter. That action should have been A #1 and taken the following day when the problems started to come to light. If this election involved a federal office then the regional federal DA would or could get involved.
All your comments are absolutely correct and it is a very sad day that the right to vote has been dismissed and disrepected in such a monumental way.
It is very different here. The State Division of Elections has no jurisdiction over local elections and if someone has an issue with a local election they must contact the “local government” folks in the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development.
“The Division of Elections does not have any jurisdiction over city or borough elections. However, the Division of Elections maintains all voter registration for the State of Alaska and provides the list of registered voters to city and borough entities for local elections”
http://www.elections.alaska.gov/ei_municipal.php
Alaska chose to maximize local governments’ control of their own affairs, especially those organized as home rule cities, boroughs or unified city and boroughs. Anchorage is one of the unified municipal home rule entities and has an obviously inadequate set of regs and oversight.
I keep waiting to hear if anyone has contacted DCCED with the growing list of concerns over this election …
Yes, which brings me back to the point that the powers that be in Alaska have to give a damn about whether an election, any election, is going to be true to its word as a basic free and fair election. There are national organizations that can be involved in the voter’s rights issues but the federal level won’t get involved until the state / voter goes through all the state’s level of authority before it steps in. As you say if it is up to the local government to determine the value of the election process then —- where is Dan Sullivan? I know, stupid questions to ask …
Question: if the State of Alaska provides the list of registered voters to the city and borough then wouldn’t that be a valued database to cross reference to see if people from outside the borough came in and voted against the equal rights amendent, case in point, Provo bussing in red shirted voters to vote against the amendent?
I would like to contribute $ to “The 10 (or 15)” to help defray their personal costs. How, to whom, where could I or others do this. This effort demonstrates the dysfunction, political whimsy, dare I say lawless behavior of our municipal bureaucracy. This effort is being done for us.
can you imagine if they had to deal with chad ?
oh my
oh my , oh my!
can’t say what I am thinking here. best to just back up and say “oh my”
or perhaps
oh. bah!
my ma used to say that when she was just flabbergasted .
consider me gasted in a mega flabber amount.
🙂
Where is the ‘Like’ button – ? 🙂
Has someone called in the judge? Think it might be pertinent to his investigation, Chairman Hall? Surely this recount is subject for some sort of legal appeal for failure to correctly secure the ballots and to follow procedures in the Municipal Code? What a disaster.
Better yet, has anybody called the mainstream media? I don’t think there’s any chance of getting verifiable results from this election at this point. It has been screwed up (probably intentionally) beyond any hope of recovery.
Why isn’t the Assembly keeping a vigilant eye on all of this? If there are irregularities, they should be ready to respond and correct course in a short span of time. What a sad mess.
History repeats itself. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Sully1 and Sully2 remind me of Bush1 and Bush2.
If you have proof that the law is not being followed, can’t you simply file a lawsuit to halt the count until the Municipal Clerk’s office can be compelled to follow the law under Court oversight?
This election has been *ahem* Sullied. Bought and paid for doncha know. Rotten to the core, just like his pa George. I grew up in Anchortown whilst George was The Boss. No surprise that his traits were passed on to his kid.
I saw the recount procedures written by the temporary worker. Those weren’t great, but apparently better than the nothing that ended up being used.
It seems Linda, you and your Election Hand Recount Application Signers, are teaching the election personnel on the *legal* ways to conduct and verify the results of an election in AK. It’s incredibly sad that you are having to use as the case study, the ballots cast (and uncast) in the most recent election. beth.
And the Assembly certified this mess. Gives one lots of confidence in our system doesn’t it?
Send them off to a room to watch multiple episodes of “Sesame Street”; perhaps The Count can do a better job of teaching them how to count correctly.
It appears to me that the entire staff at the Municipal Clerks Office should be gutted and reinstated w/an entire new group of folks especially to include management! Classes then should be instituted for all of them reviewing the laws in which they are to operated as well as the new procedures that need to be enforced!
This office is a horrid embarrassment to Anchorage. Plus, there is a growing concern within the population that a correct and ethical voting process will be in place this November.
We need to be assured our vote ‘does count’!!!
I think using anything other than hand written ballots is an error. I don’t trust the machines or computers.
But now could we really trust a human count of hand written ballots?
Is Anchorage living in a different century than the rest of the world, like the 19th maybe? I say bring out UN forces watch while the counters start tallying the ballots once again. Sheesh!