On the Mike Porcaro Show on Wednesday (6.50 KENI AM), Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher explained that it was a mistake an instructional flyer that went out to all voters had the presidential candidate “Harris” on it, with Harris marked as the first choice for president.
Beecher said the flyer was not checked for such an error before it was mailed.
A report on Wednesday at Must Read Alaska exposed the problem with the flyer, which shows voters how to rank their choices in the presidential race.
There are eight candidates on the example ballot, seven of which have names that will not appear on the actual ballot. Then, there was the name of “Harris,” a name that voters will actually see on their ballots. Ballots are already being sent to voters who requested vote-by-mail ballots and to overseas voters.
Harris is marked as the voter’s first choice in the instructions sent to voters:
The example ballot has other problems. One of the candidates has the name “Vasquez.” Although there is no Vasquez appearing on the presidential portion of the General Election ballot, there is a Vazquez (slightly different spelling, with z rather than s) appearing as a candidate in the Senate District H race in Anchorage. Some 29,000 voters will get that ballot, as Republican Vazquez challenges Democrat incumbent Sen. Matt Claman.
On the division’s example ballot for president, Vasquez is marked sixth.
The use of “Harris” and “Vasquez” as a presidential candidate also appeared in the Division of Elections’ instructional video, but on the video, Harris’ name was not marked first. This is a screen shot of the video:
As of Thursday, in the library of instructional videos at the Division of Elections website, the presidential race explanation video has been removed:
In the state general election cycle in 2022 — the first time Alaskans used ranked-choice voting — the Division of Elections used animals to explain how to vote your ranked-choice election ballot:
This year, the instructional material was created and provided to the division by an outside vendor, and the Division of Elections staff did not thoroughly check the work for the serious issue of an actual candidate’s name appearing in the instructional material, and being marked as the preferred candidate.