By ART CHANCE
My earliest memories of things political in Alaska were the controversies surrounding Jay Hammond’s defeat of the legendary Bill Egan for governor in 1974, followed four years later by Hammond’s primary defeat of Wally Hickel. Both those elections were rife with error and fraud.
The Alaska Supreme Court said in plain language that the 1978 Hammond-Hickel primary was tainted by malconduct to the extent that the true outcome was in doubt, but it refused to upset the election result. There was fraud in Knowles’ 1998 victory over Robin Taylor but again, the court refused to upset the election result.
Back in the day, Alaska had four time zones and was, in Southeast Alaska, four time zones from the East Coast. On election night, once the votes came in from Southeast and the Railbelt, you knew how many votes you needed so you got on the phone to rural Alaska where you had two more time zones and two more hours to find votes; let the bidding begin.
Those were the days when the “Bush Caucus” had enormous power in Alaska politics. I’ll never really understand why Gov. Bill Sheffield collapsed Alaska into one time zone (with a few small exceptions) because it took away one of the greatest power sources the Democrats had: the Bush Vote.
Since the free gas incentives in the first Knowles election, fraud hasn’t been much of an issue in Statewide elections, which isn’t to say there wasn’t any, but it wasn’t determinative. There have been more than mere suspicion in many House, Senate, and local elections, but those don’t get much attention.
Alaska’s voting system has always been ripe for fraud. The registration system was far too loose, it was too easy to cast an absentee or challenged ballot, and supervision of the vote count was somewhere between scant and non-existent in much of the State. They were “finding” bags of ballots in the trunk of Trooper cars weeks after the elections in the Hammond-Egan and Hammond-Hickel elections. Somehow we became complacent in the Murkowski-Palin-Parnell-Walker years because the elections weren’t that close.
Then the good-government types did the stupidest thing in Alaska history; they came up with the Permanent Fund dividend automatic registration, as if motor-voter wasn’t fraud bait enough. Everybody and his dog can and does apply for a PFD. The Permanent Fund Division of the Department of Revenue has virtually no verification or fraud detection capability. It relies on PFD fraudsters doing something stupid and getting ratted out by their jealous neighbors. The State makes a lot of smoke and noise busting a few of them every so often and uses that as its fraud deterrent. Only God knows how many registered voter don’t live here or who don’t exist.
Fast forward to the Scamdemic. The communists, excuse me, Democrats used the Scamdemic as their justification to assault Alaska’s already sketchy election laws. There were plenty of leftist judges who were ever-so happy to go along. The judges removed the second signature verification from absentee ballots. They sent out unrequested absentee ballot applications to thousands of “registered” voters who might or might not exist.
We already had an extended early voting period, so the Democrats could use George Soros or SEIU money to bring punks with iPads north to work the neighborhoods and harvest votes or, some think, harvest ballot applications from mailboxes. I don’t know how much the unions and other leftist groups were using their resources to produce fraudulent ballots, but they certainly had the capability. Give them a list of registered voters that you know no longer live in the district or even in the State, and they’ll give you however many votes you want.
If you were trying to design a voting scheme that was easy to defraud, look no further than Anchorage’s all mail ballot system. Anchorage uses the State of Alaska’s filthy voter rolls. Practically everybody who has come to Alaska seeking a summer job or fleeing an arrest warrant and who applied for unemployment and food stamps is a registered voter, even if they didn’t get the job and went back to Podunk in a month. Practically every military guy who got ordered here applied for a PFD when eligible and even though it has been 10 years and he/she has no intention of ever returning, s/he’s a registered voter in Alaska and a PFD recipient.
Anchorage has a lengthy “early voting” period and provides anyone who asks a list of who has and hasn’t voted so far. That is simply a vote harvesting scheme. If you are a union, you have a very accurate contact list of all your members, in most cases provided to you by a public employer at public expense. You check the list of who has and hasn’t voted, and you send somebody to go jack up the ones that haven’t.
The leftist special interest groups are almost as effective but they have to do their own work to keep their contact lists up to date. The unions and the leftist front groups WILL get out their vote. I’ve always suspected that a lot of those people don’t know they voted, but we’ve never had a government that was courageous or honest enough to check.
In Anchorage, the Left buys votes at wholesale; conservatives/Republicans have to get their vote at retail. The Democrats/leftists/union get most of their votes in neatly organized blocks of union members and interest group members. They are easy to identify and turn out, and particularly with the union members there is an implicit threat if they don’t turn out and vote “right.”
The Left can organize their vote without ever running a single mass media advertisement; email and social media will contact every one of their constituents, and only their constituents.
The Right has to try to contact their constituencies through a hopelessly fragmented media market and with shoe leather and phone calls, and since the State’s rolls don’t have accurate or up-to-date addresses or contact numbers, a conservative candidate has to spend a lot of money for somewhat more accurate lists, or just trudge down the streets of the districts hoping to find somebody who hasn’t already voted for the leftist.
Even the shoe leather is somewhat subsidized by the public treasury to turn out the Left’s vote. Most unions have some sort of paid release from work for “union business.” Union members can be released from duty with pay to handbill, put up signs, or engage in get-out-the-vote activities for union endorsed candidates at the public expense. I have personal knowledge of union/Democrat get-out-the-vote phone banks set up in State of Alaska conference rooms. I have personal knowledge of union members being sent out to put up signs for union backed candidates on “work” time.
The elections are rigged.
And, no, the exception isn’t proof; Mayor Bronson’s election was a fluke. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ implosion and the growing revulsion to the leftist Assembly’s Scamdemic fascism made his election possible, but that election gave him nothing with which to govern; he has one and a half votes on the Assembly, an Assembly which is dedicated to the proposition of not letting him govern.
So long as we have the current mail ballot electoral system, the Municipal government will only serve public employees and parasites; the rest of us just get to pay for it all. The School Board is no better — the taxpayers and parents have one vote on the board, Dave Donley; the teachers’ union has the rest.
Lots of Republicans are pounding their chests about an impending “Red Tsunami” because of the Democrats’ weak showing in the polls these days.
It is an illusion; they don’t have to win the vote, they just have to win the count.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
I’m 48 years old, follow politics and went to college and I still feel like a naïve lamb after reading one of Art’s columns.
Art – Amen to all you say!
Can you imagine breaking the oath then just pretending like all is well it’s for the best. Then run to the cameras tell the lie and all is well. If that was me I would realize my last breath on earth, has a very angry GOD waiting for oath breakers just on the other side. Absolutely not oath breakers come clean on our side I would not let it all go till I got to the other side. Oath integrity or bust.
Spot on Art your articles remind me of Victor Davis Hanson’s, you are a treasure to read. Keep up the excellent writing!
So, Mr. Chance makes it sound impossible to fight this problem, but I, for one, don’t believe that. It take courageous people to step up and do the next RIGHT thing. If we don’t all get involved, we don’t have the right to complain! Just because you vote doesn’t mean you are represented. When you are engaged you are represented, period.
I don’t think it is impossible; I’m just telling you what you have to fight.
1-I don’t doubt your claim you have witnessed voter fraud being done on state time. But I’d love to see you make it public.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Cleaning up corrupt Alaska has to start somewhere.
2-You have touched on the real reason the left wins at the ballot box and the culture wars. They are organized, motivated, and never stop working.
The perfect example is feckless governor Dunleavy. He took one good shot in the political mouth in Wasilla and folded like a K Mart tent. He’s been a political cuckhold/eunuch ever since.
The only thing that stops the right from putting forward the same effort as the left is they don’t want to. The Koch Bros could find right of center candidates like Soros does, but he (ones passed) doesn’t bother. Why?
He makes more money sitting on the sidelines.
Typical of the GOP. They are big talk, no effort. The left is big talk backed by bigger effort.
Just Like Alaska….
Ranked-choice voting: Missouri State RINOs Sell Out… Will Missouri Turn BLUE?
‘https://www.dcclothesline.com/2022/02/19/missouri-state-rinos-sell-out-will-missouri-turn-blue/
One only needs to ask
How much money did Mike pacarro make promoting the fraud of rank choice voting
Dave, you are right; Mike Porcaro talks out of both sides of his mouth. He is in it for political, advertising, and other Public Relations contracts. Always leaves every subject open to obfuscation and misinterpretation.
Agreed to you both. Mike will say and do whatever paying customers ask him to. He did the same thing with the Pebble Mine.
All that and nothing about how it can be changed. All that and no solution? That was latterly just your rant!
You don’t think many of us don’t realize something’s wrong with our elections?
Tell me What the channels are to get an audit? Tell me what as Alaskan’s we can do to help? Ugh, I can’t believe I read all that.
The conclusion was we are screwed!
I’m sure the new opaque and impossible-to-audit ranked choice voting scheme will fix it. Don’t be surprised if the Dems in Alaska do inexplicably well this year compared to the rest of the country after the all the “counting” is done.
Great article, and accurate. Art knows his stuff. Unions are primarily responsible for teaching vote fraud techniques to the Democrats. This is where it started, decades ago. It’s become more refined and sophisticated over the decades. Union bosses can’t help themselves. Cheating and rigging elections are their favorite games. If union members started thinking for themselves and seeing how destructive the new Left is, those union members would come to their senses and vote the opposite way that their corrupt bosses instruct them.
I can explain that the reason Sheffield combined Juneau and Southcentral into one time zone was to de-fuse the argument that the Capital was too far away from the population. The Capital move issue was re-raging at the time. Interestingly, we all got moved into the “phantom time zone” which only covered a tiny bit of Alaska before it vanished at the Alaska-Canada border. Remember when you crossed the border you had to change your clock by 2 hours? Anchorage is now on “Double Daylight Savings Time” in the summer whereas Juneau reverts back to their “true solar time” in the summer and “Daylight Wasting Time” in the winter. I don’t really care because “clock time” is a human relativistic invention anyway. However I do object to changing our clocks twice a year. Its silly and stupid and I feel like someone is playing a huge joke on us all. If Hawaii can omit this practice then surely we can too. If we do that then Congress might just get rid of it nation-wide. Because of our latitude, we suffer from the negative effects more than anyone.
I know all the practical reasons for changing the time zones. I lived in ANC back in the 5 time zones days and did a lot of business with the State. When I came to work at 8AM everybody in Juneau was on their 10AM break; it drove you crazy trying to talk to anyone in JNU. Of course, going to voice mail on all State phones in the ’90s made all that look good; nobody has answered a State phone since the mid-Nineties.
Bill Sheffield was in many ways Mr. Democrat and he sacrificed a major Democrat political advantage by collapsing the time zones. The time zone math never bothered me but I’m of a generation that can actually do math in my head and without battery power. That said, I learned that I didn’t have a single east coast relative or friend who could subtract 5 from any number, so I got a lot of calls at odd hours.
Until this state cleans up the vote system, we will all, regardless of party, be disenfranchised come election time. Because of our poor system, many people choose not to vote. It is our most sacred right. I have been very disappointed with the lack of effort that our state and local governments have put in towards cleaning up our system. You are required more ID to go into an eating or drinking establishment or for driving a car than to cast a ballot. Can’t even board an aircraft for that matter. Now they even have turned it into some kind of lottery with rank choice voting. Humans are not even capable of running the tally, we must use a computer, and everyone knows how safe that is. No problem here.
Mr. Chance cites to no evidence to support his wild claims that Alaska’s elections are rigged. He claims that the Alaska Supreme Court found that a contest between Jay Hammond and Walter Hickel was tainted by malconduct, but if you click on the link he provided in his article and read the Supreme Court’s decision, you will find that it says exactly the opposite. He cites no other evidence to support his assertions that elections in Alaska are unfair. So this article is just another unsupported rant by a right wing fringe commentator claiming elections aren’t fair.
These sorts of unfounded conspiracy theories seem to be based on the fact that candidates supported by the extreme right often lose elections. Might there be another reason that extremely conservative candidates fair poorly in elections? Only 24% of Americans are registered republicans. Republicans are in the midst of a civil war in which more moderate party members are attacked as being RINOs because they don’t suscribe to the ridiculous positions advocated by the right wing lunatic fringe. These so called RINOs often won’t vote for Republican candidates who are too extreme. That makes it very unlikely that candidates favored by the far right will win in a general election.
The recent defeat of Trump by Biden illustrates this point, Trump alienated many independent voters and some Republicans. He is hated by the left, which turned out in large numbers to vote against him. Not surprisingly. He lost by a huge margin (more than 7 million votes). Because he is a delusional narcissist, he claimed he lost due to fraud and refused to concede. But his defeat was almost a certainty given that he consistently alienated moderate voters. Since registered republicans make up fewer than 25% of the population, a Republican candidate cannot win a general election unless he draws substantial support from independents, many of whom are moderate or liberal.
That didn’t take long. As soon as one of Suzanne’s best columnists puts out a tremendous article with historical and factual data to support it, another sniveling communist with long-term TDD (Trump Derangement Disorder) kicks out a sophomoric rebuttal. Expect a lot of this as election season takes off. These little psychotic pukes with their sissy rhetoric, troll these sites looking for more conspiracy theory remarks. They do it home with their laptops, masks on and with their Covid booster appointments on sticky pads near the screen.
Philadelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Detroit, along with Phoenix and Las Vegas were all part of the election fraud on 2020. This is what Democrats do. They lie, cheat and steal….then deflect blame. Joe Biden had over 10 million fraudulent votes delivered late at nite via courriers. Democrats sat at polling sites, waiting for the clock to stop at 8pm so they could position their fraud counters throughout the night, after legitimate poll watchers were mysteriously sent home. Cameras caught them red-handed. A thousand sworn affidavits from witnesses. Windows at poll locations boarded up. Internet connections were made to electronic ballot counting machines, so manipulation of vote tallies could begin and last throughout the night.
Late night deliveries of tens of thousands of pre-marked ballots with no down votes. And the little communists still talk about conspiracy theories.
Where is Obama, Hillary, Comey, Black leaders in the aforementioned cities? All quiet,……hoping this exposure doesn’t ruin the mid-terms. Meanwhile, our counterfeit president is taking his Alzheimer’s medication and getting instructions from Jill on how to dispose of his used Depends.
No wonder world wars begin on Democrat watches. Foreign dictators know when to make their moves, while a demented Joe Biden is watching reruns of the Simpsons and eating chocolate ice cream with little girls…..and laughing with Hunter about Hunter’s bizarre string of drug usage, family hook-ups, and pedophilia.These Democrats are a nasty bunch of disgusting America haters who never grew up. They will go down hard this fall. Make sure we keep them there.
Hard to accept losing isn’t it. Too bad you have to live with yourself, it must be so confusing.
Republicans didn’t lose and they know it. The real confusion is amongst Democrats, who don’t know if they are transgendered, homosexual, non-binary, male, female, it, lesbian, queer, bisexual, or something yet to be catagorized. Have fun, Berv, trying to figure yourself out. LOL.
I’ve been watching NASCAR all morning about as far as you can get these days from lefty lies. There are 150 thousand people at the Daytona 500 and not a mask in sight. I think the people have had it with the Scamdemic and are giving the Soros Junta, excuse me, the Biden Administration a collective finger. The communists, excuse me, Democrats haven’t even cut off the military flyovers during the National Anthem like Comrade Obama did during his reign. But there was a lull in the action so I came over on troll patrol.
I learned long ago that the best indicator of what the leftist scum are thinking and doing is to take note of what they’re accusing you of doing. Soros, Zuckerberg, Gates et al. and their menagerie of communist front groups stole the 2020 election with massive fraud. They did it with an elaborate and expensive scheme to make the election returns unauditable. In the states they attacked, there was no way to establish and verify a chain of custody for ballots. Consequently, hand recounts, the usual means of verifying election results were meaningless; the ballot count would withstand a hand recount, but there was absolutely no way to determine where the ballots came from or to verify their authenticity. It’s real easy to plug in a jump drive or bring over ten thousand ballots from the union hall in the middle of the night.
I don’t know if this troll is ignorant or lying about the malconduct issue. The AKSC indeed found malconduct, but found it wasn’t sufficient to change the outcome of the election. That standard is the issue. First, malconduct isn’t even in my trusty Seventies vintage Webster’s Collegiate; it is an odd and archaic word. What the use of that vague word and the Court imposed standard that the conduct has to affect the outcome of the election makes the determination entirely subjective. The people in the black robes get to decide how much error and fraud is acceptable, and that determination is subject to a lot of politics. Knowles became governor in ’94 with a 500 and change margin, and there was plenty of error and fraud that a reasonable person might conclude affected the outcome of that election.
The election statutes need a hard look and significant amendment. However, Alaska tolerates a tremendous amount of slovenliness, inefficiency, and even corruption because the people who run things got there by knowing how things work, and the last thing they want is to change the things they understand and allow someone to threaten their power and position.
I’m waiting to hear, or see, any actual data that suggest whatever Mr. Chance alleges has actually happened or is happening. Without verification, other than Mr. Chance’s eyewitness testimony (and we all know by now that eyewitness testimony is notoriously suspect), this all amounts to hearsay. And who is here to say that his allegations don’t disadvantage the Libs and as well as the Cons.
Alleged voter fraud is nothing new. I lived in The Windy when Boss Daley was in charge, and there was little doubt that voter fraud was happening, but no one ever looked into it because that could get you a pair of concrete overshoes and a trip to Lake Michigan, or if they really hated you, the Chicago River. So far as I know, that is not happening nor has it happened in AK. In Chi Town the syndicate knew how to run things. Alaska politics look more like a clown car than a car full of maintenance men.
Art seems to be drifting off into antiquity, like the Chicago of Richard J. Times change, and what happened during Art’s tenure on the state dole has probably changed with time, as well. In any case, time will tell.
Great apology for corruption and debasement of the fundamental right to an honest vote and honest elections, Homo.
Just like every other radical leftist, it is ALL good, and OK by you, if it furthers your political agenda, no matter how unprincipled, how corrupt, how dishonest, how deceitful, how manipulative, how degrading, and how destructive to the common good it may be.
Well said, and sadly so true. The honest democrats left when big government leftists partnered with big corporate globalists and any facade of the left being for “the little guy” or the “common man” fell apart. Those blue collar democrats, defenders of speech and lovers of liberty, realized the real battle lines were between globalists and nationalists, the ruling class oligarchs and the populists. What’s left, on the left, are the folks that want power for powers sake. They are either in the system and have something to gain, or they are a pure partisan tribalist. It’s no longer about getting to a place of prosperity and individual liberty for all, it’s about winning at all costs and then punishing the other side and any who would oppose or ignore their rulers edicts, so as to make an example and discourage any dissent.
Yes and when voting just write in the same person each time or make up a name and write that in so the rank would be messed up for the wannabes. Remember Lisa won on a write in and they can’t tell you who to vote for.
You make a great point. How often do the “conservative victories” actually lead to conservative policies? Whenever a conservative is elected governor or Mayor of Anchorage, the overwhelmingly leftist legislature/assembly blocks all progress. The vote rigging system gives the illusion of choice while blocking all actual conservatism.
Brutal honesty with facts not easily refuted. Commendable.
Keep at it art, for years we would wonder at the lunch table the next day after we all voted, at the store everyone would be talking. How who voted no way how… HOW??? The corrupt voting has been so exposed for all to see, to all oath breakers wake up and imagine your explaining your corruption to GOD himself and not your pals cameras. Because oath breakers your contact is with GOD.
The leftist voting apparatus is well organized and funded, with loads of “volunteers”, including union members that can be shipped state to state. They have the ability to hack voters rolls if they can’t get them any other way. They understand how ranked voting works and how to manipulate it, and probably helped design voting machines and their software. As Art points out, just look at our assembly and school board to see how effective they are. Just voting Republican is not the answer, as they have gotten very good at running RINOS. It will take education, organization, and focus to regain control. The removal of highly partisan election officials would be a good start.
Well said, Ben.
.
And I do not for a second believe that it is simply a coincidence that the current and overwhelming Marxist majority on the Anchorage ass-embly came into being precisely and immediately AFTER mail-in voting was forced on Anchorage voters.
Remember, here in Juneau a special remote building was purchased by the Democrat city council strictly for ballot counting. It has no other uses. Nothing problematic here.
Art Chance: “…the people who run things got there by knowing how things work, and the last thing they want is to change the things they understand and allow someone to threaten their power and position.”
Truer words were never spoken.
And that isn’t a Democrat problem. It’s a politician problem. Just like most Americans says about Congress: “Congress sucks, but my guy is ok.” The same is true in state legislatures: “The legislature in Juneau is terrible, but my guy (or gal) isn’t as bad as most of them.”
If your standard of excellence in a politician is someone willing to take your phone call at the capitol building, or someone willing to attend a town hall and listen to you give your 2 minute testimony, then that’s all you’re gonna get.
Republican voters have been training their politicians for decades. Politicians think that once they’ve listened to you rant, they’ve done their job. Then they go back to whatever it was they were doing before you called.
Why do they do this? Because Republican voters have trained them to meet that standard (plus, to throw a few verbal punches at the Democrats every now and then for good measure). If they fail to meet that standard, they get criticized for not listening to the voters and sometimes bounced from office. If they meet that standard they often get kudos, attaboys, and volunteers for their next parade.
Election integrity will never pick up steam as long as we are still praising the politicians (of both parties) who aren’t doing anything meaningful about it other than talking.
How much is election integrity worth to your politician? In politics, that often translates into “how many other things is your politician willing to vote No on until they get the election reforms they demand.”
David, is your small friend, Rep. Hopkins, getting to you with all of his HATE?
AMEN!!!
Well! You know what happens to corrupt governments? They fall. Look what is happening to ukraine, its east border is being marched on by russia right before their eyes. Where is ukraines corrupt government leaders? I don’t know, what i do know the ukranian people are feeling bewildered and hopeless. Now. If russia and alaska governments had any sense they’d clean up and weed out corruption before their governments collaspe. The only way to weed out corruption is nailing your sins to the cross. Starting with yourself.
Only Alaska and the city of San Francisco, and Maine (?) us the new system of voting. Did anyone note how much of it was written by THE Scott Kendall? You know, the same Scott Kendall who was former Governor Walker’s right hand man? Now that old Chicago saying: Vote early, vote often can be legal. 4 choices? No real majorities? I can wait for the results. Or, as Uncle Joe Stalin said, it matters not how you vote, it matters who counts the vote.
This is an important story to put you on notice election fraud is alive and well and to let you know there will be no relaxing ‘ever’ in the pursuit of election integrity. Thank you Art. The State must do more and must start by eliminating the voting tabulation machines/computers that we have currently. Did I say immediately get rid of the the current tabulation computers/machines we currently use? If that does not happen, there will be zero trust in the system. That is the starter. Vote in person with ID, hand count with party reps present from each side. (pay attention to what the Anchorage Assembly is doing trying to discourage Republican representation/ observers) I was suspicious but now no longer trust Anchorage Boroughs elections integrity. The price you pay to cheat must be raised… let’s up the price to an Unclassified Felony which is 5-99 years… which would include LOCAL election fraud.
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