Assembly Delays Independent Investigation – Election Commission Begins Investigation of Self (UPDATED)
More Questions Than Answers As we march ahead, trying to make sense of the Anchorage Municipal election of April 3, and as more citizens step forward to testify, we find that the questions and concerns have multiplied. Any one of several factors is cause for concern: Polling places running out of ballots, voters being turned away from their polling places, disenfranchisement of unknown numbers of voters, deliberate misinformation from a conservative group to cause chaos at the polls, naive confidence by the Election Commissioner regarding equipment widely known to be problematic, instructions to ignore or replace broken security seals on…
Baked Alaska: Yet Another Election Crashes and Burns on the Last Frontier
By Brad Friedman [Read the entire excellent article at BradBlog.com. Extensive excerpts below] …And then there are the election officials of Anchorage, Alaska, where, on April 3rd, there was another disastrous election, held on Diebold op-scan systems, in a state becoming known for its disastrous elections. “Those are amazing machines – utterly amazing,” Anchorage Election Commissioner Gwen Matthews told members of the Anchorage Assembly last Friday night during a working session as they tried to unravel the latest disaster. “It is impossible for them to go haywire,” she misinformed the law makers. “They are highly accurate. I think that I could…
Anchorage’s Election Disaster Goes to the Assembly
~Lennie Moren and Jane Darden speak volumes at the Assembly meeting By Jeanne Devon and Linda Kellen Biegel First things first. If you have not yet signed the online petition asking the Anchorage Assembly to call for a fair and independent audit of the Anchorage election of April 3, 2012, then please do so HERE. It will give you the option to share it on Facebook, to your email list, and on Twitter. You are encouraged to do so. Tuesday Night at the Fights (aka the Anchorage Assembly meeting) was important this week. This was one of only two meetings…
BREAKING: Document Reveals Sullivan Misrepresented Escalating Port Cost
The Mudflats has obtained documents showing that Mayor Dan Sullivan is grossly misrepresenting the costs of completing the first phase of the controversial Port of Anchorage Expansion Project. Anyone who has been following the costs associated with the project can hardly help but liken it to that old tongue-in-cheek definition of a boat – a hole in the water into which you pour money. The cost of the increasingly controversial project has more than tripled since 2005 estimates. A draft of the Budgetary Cost Estimate Report for the Port of Anchorage Intermodal Expansion Project, jointly prepared by the U.S. Department of…
The Return of Occupy: Beaten, but Not Down
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. ~Pablo Neruda My head hurts. Three months after my arrest during an Occupy Wall Street protest on #D17, and two days away from my meeting with the Assistant DA about said arrest, I got beaten just outside of Zuccotti Park. I wasn’t the only one, and I have no doubt I won’t be the last. The NYPD has complete authority in this town. I hate using the term “police state,” but when I saw a girl thrown from a bus and tossed to the ground, in handcuffs, having…
Sean Parnell Attends a Class in Propaganda 101
~Frank Luntz, GOP Minister of Propaganda By Shannyn Moore While most Alaskans were suffering through another cold, dark week, Gov. Sean Parnell was hard at work — on another junket, this time to the Republican Governor’s Association meeting in Florida. Odd — no palm tree beach shots on the state website. In fact, no official mention of the trip at all — just one picture on his Facebook page saying the governor participated in a “panel discussion on energy issues.” One of the presenters at the governors’ conference was Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist whose specialty is “testing…
Equal Rights on the Ballot – Community Leaders Stand Up for One Anchorage
Remember when Ordinance 64 came before the Assembly? It stated that the LGBT community should have basic equal rights when it comes to housing, education, employment and use of public facilities. Pretty basic stuff, right? Well, after almost 24 hours of public testimony (including testimony from people who didn’t even live in Anchorage, yet were bussed in from evangelical Wasilla churches), the Anchorage Assembly voted yes on the ordinance. And after weeks of debate, during what has been dubbed “The Summer of Hate”, Mayor Dan Sullivan had the hubris to circumvent the public process, and the vote of the Assembly….