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November 2, 2024

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No Time for Tuckerman -

Thursday, August 3, 2023

The Quitter Returns! -

Monday, March 21, 2022

Putting the goober in gubernatorial -

Friday, January 28, 2022

Election Commissioner and Deputy Clerk Should Be Relieved of Duty

Brad Friedman, an award-winning investigative journalist and expert on issues of election integrity, and the Diebold AccuVote system used in the recent Anchorage Municipal election, had comments about inaccuracies told by the Election Commissioner Gwen Mathew at last night’s meeting of the Assembly to certify the election. His outrage, and call for both Mathew, and Deputy Clerk Jacqueline Duke to be removed from their posts immediately, is a sentiment shared by a growing number of Anchorage residents who are becoming more informed regarding their ineptitude and outright misinformation. Here are Friedman’s comments after watching Mathew’s testimony at Thursdays Assembly meeting,…

Election Commissioner and Poll Worker Clash at Assembly Meeting – “That’s a lie!”

Tensions ran high at last night’s Assembly meeting, held to certify the badly botched Municipal election of April 3, 2012. The most intense moment came when Gwen Mathew, the Anchorage Election Commissioner, testified to the Assembly about the issue of broken security seals on the Diebold AccuVote machines on the day of the election. Mathew stated that she had received no report “at all, anywhere, of a seal being broken.” Wendy Isbell, a poll worker who had reported a broken seal multiple times in testimony, in writing, and by interview, to the Assembly, her precinct chair, and the Election Commission…

Mudflats Exclusive: Joe Miller Calls for Unity and Right of Citizens to Hand Count of Municipal Election

Former Alaskan Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller, has issued a statement to The Mudflats regarding the integrity of all elections, including the Alaska Senate race in 2010, and the recently held Anchorage Municipal election on April 3, 2012. The Mudflats strongly supported Joe Miller’s (and Scott McAdams’) right to a full hand count of paper ballots in the 2010 election, and for processes that were fair, laws that were consistent, and the ultimate right of citizens to have confidence in their electoral process. Miller has been a strong proponent of the accessibility of the public to a full…

Anchorage Moves to Certify, but There is Still Time

  By Shannyn Moore Remember standardized testing when you were a kid? You’d fill in those ovals with that Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 until your eyes bugged out. Schools provided “smart snacks” of carrots and apples on testing days. Now imagine if they let you grade the tests. I’m sure you’re good, honest folks, but what a horrible position to put you in. “Oh, I knew this answer, I just forgot.” That’s basically what Anchorage Assembly chair Ernie Hall and the “election commission” appointed by Mayor Dan Sullivan, did this week. They graded their own performance on a debacle of…

Municipal Election Commission Releases Report – Let the Whitewashing Begin!

~The security seal used to secure memory cards into Anchorage’s insecure Diebold AccuVote machines. Today in the Mayor’s conference room in City Hall, the Election Commission released the results of its report and recommendations, including revised numbers that say that 65 of 121 precincts ran out of ballots at some point during the day – a higher total than the 55 previously reported. The commission’s report came after two meetings with voters and poll workers who spoke one-on-one with an individual election commissioner. Mudflats contributor Elstun Lauesen was there today when Commission Chair Gwen Matthew read the entire report aloud….

The Not-So-Public Election Meeting – (Updated Photo)

~Mayor Dan Sullivan and Deputy Clerk Jacqueline Duke (R) celebrate on St. Patrick’s Day at McGinley’s Bar of which Sullivan is part owner A hastily-called Saturday meeting of the Election Commission was the scene of some interesting and dramatic revelations. Overheard comments that Assembly Chair Hall will be restructuring a vital committee to install Adam Trombley as Chair, and angry voters who were denied the right to speak to the entire body dominated the day – at least for me.  The actual testimony , however, was not able to be heard by the public. Private testimony and “anticipated volume” The…

Indications of Malfeasance and Election Fraud Surface in Anchorage

By Jeanne Devon and Linda Kellen Biegel Friday’s Assembly work session at the Loussac Library was a chance for Anchorage Assembly members to ask questions of the key players involved in the botched Municipal election of April 3. They’d be speaking to Gwen Matthews, Chair of the Election Commission; Barbara Gruenstein, Municipal Clerk; Jacqueline Duke, Deputy Municipal Clerk; and Dennis Wheeler, Municipal Attorney. Validity of Votes Cast First up was Gwen Matthew who spoke of her role checking for the validity of the votes cast. She assured the Assembly that her team was examining everything with all the tools at…

Diebold Voting Machines Can Be Hacked for $10, and How This Could Save Your Thanksgiving.

I roll over lazily, stretch, yawn, and open one eye… I do a combined gasp/shriek, recoil a little, and bury my face in the pillow. Yes, my strange bedfellow is still here. I thought he left after the 2010 election, but apparently not. Given that you all know how I feel about former U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller, that I agree with virtually none of his political philosophy, and that I am grateful every day that he is not in Washington, D.C., he does bring up an interesting point to the readers of his website. The topic of the article…

Why Joe Miller Has a Point

Something  in Alaska stinks. Again. Not just an ordinary low tide smell. Not like something you’d blame on the dog. It smells like an infection. For me to plug my nose, I’d have to overlook some curious facts. I’ve written another piece like this. It was after the last election. I said it the three elections before that. In the words of baseball great Yogi Berra, it’s Déjà vu all over again! I’m writing and talking about the same thing, in what has become an even-year ritual: Alaska doesn’t count votes properly and hasn’t for years.  Alaska still uses the…