Assembly confirms two, but denies one to the Anchorage Election Commission

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Two former lieutenant governors — Mead Treadwell and Loren Leman — were confirmed by the Anchorage Assembly on Tuesday. But one person, who has called out the municipal clerk for being deceitful on Election Night last year, was voted down, 7-4.

Assembly Vice Chair Chris Constant tried to delay the confirmation of Treadwell and Leman, but finally made the political calculation that two Alaskans who had run the state Division of Elections were probably not ones to mess with for confirmation to a local election commission; the optics would have been difficult for Constant to explain.

Then it came to Bee Hanson, the third appointee by the mayor to the Election Commission. Hanson was asked by Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar to explain why she had said in previous commentaries that Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones, who is in charge of elections, had lied to her.

Hanson was one of the observers on Election Night during the mayoral runoff in 2021, on behalf of the Dave Bronson campaign. Hanson explained to Dunbar and the Assembly that she and other election observers had been advised by Jones on that night that work was done for the night and everyone was going home.

Hanson and the other observers left the Election building at Ship Creek, as instructed by Jones. Hanson then spoke to a person on the Bronson campaign who had decided to do a late-night drive by of the Election Office to see if, in fact, everyone was gone. That person, Bernadette Wilson, noted people working inside the building and a person opening an unsecured door to the building.

At that point, explained Hanson, she decided to go back to the Election Office and, upon arriving she saw that election workers were leaving the parking lot in their cars. One of them rolled down her window of her car and asked Hanson what she was doing back at the Election Office. Hanson replied that she had the same question of the election workers, since all the observers had been told the workers were heading home 40 minutes prior.

View the Assembly grilling Hanson here.

The description Hanson gave the Assembly was exactly how it happened on Election night, and can be corroborated by witnesses.

Hanson had arrived at the after-election party for Mayor Bronson at an event center, and told people there that Barb Jones had sent the observers home. Must Read Alaska’s Suzanne Downing was talking to Hanson when she got the call from Bernadette Wilson, who had driven back to the Election building to double check that it was really shut down for the night. Wilson called from the parking lot of that building and described she could see workers continuing to work in the building.

Hanson, who was shocked that people were still working in the building, left Downing’s office and returned to the election office. There were multiple witnesses to these events.

Watch the Wilson video here.https://fb.watch/aveXH59kdl/

The event was recorded and posted on the Must Read Alaska Facebook page the next day with the following account:

“How secure are Anchorage Elections? In this video by a citizen monitor, a woman approaches the Election Office in Anchorage on Election night, Tuesday, May 11, at 10:58 pm and opens the door, and appears to look or speak to people inside. In an earlier video she has a parcel of some sort nearby and under her arm. In this clip, she leaves. An election worker then comes to the door once, and then again and appears to set the lock. This was after all observers had been sent home and told there was no more work being done at the Election Office on Election night, clearly not the case. For this reason and others, the Bronson for Mayor team has taken a recreational vehicle to the Election Office parking lot to keep a closer eye on what is going on with the counting of ballots in the mayor’s election, and they are staying there 24-7 in shifts.”

After that incident, the Bronson campaign brought in a recreational vehicle and kept it in the parking lot in order to keep closer tabs on the comings and goings at the building.

Hanson, in her testimony Tuesday, also detailed other irregularities she witnessed at the Election Office.

She was voted down by the Assembly on Tuesday as not qualified to be a member of the Election Commission.

The takeaway is that if you challenge the Municipal Clerk, you need not apply for the Election Commission, said a member of the Bronson Administration.

23 COMMENTS

  1. It is always nine against one against the individuals of Anchorage. This is not “representation” of the people of Anchorage. These assembly people need to find work for the one world order elsewhere.

  2. Thats the way the world lives. “Don’t forget, don’t forgive, and hold a grudge to the grave.” Hahahaha. These people have not learned forgiveness yet.

  3. This is proof that Democrats have no bounds or scruples when it comes to election integrity. Cheating is in their DNA. Look at the national situation. Our illegitmate president Biden, who was voted into office by election fraud in MI, WI, PA, GA, AZ, and NV, is now running around the country making speeches to force election fraud in all future American elections. It worked so well in 2020 for Democrats that they need to make it legal before Republicans have a chance to win again and have criminal charges against them. To cover up the lies, they just want to make election fraud easy and legal. Jail time is what they need. Action ….. Now!

    • Marla, with radical leftists, it is ALL about gaining, expanding and exercising pure naked power. EVERY other consideration falls by the wayside in the pursuit of that goal — cheating, lying, bending and breaking the rules, deceit, corruption, collusion, conspiracy, are all on the table when radical leftists are involved. Having no principles other than the pursuit and exercise of raw naked power, they laugh at those who try to engage with them in honesty and decency.

      • What a load of b.s. Jefferson portrays himself to be a rational person who engages with persons holding different opinions with “honesty and decency.” But in the preceding sentence he claims that anyone who is a liberal is a liar, a cheater, a rule breaker, and a deceitful and corrupt person. He sure doesn’t sound like someone with an open mind who is willing to listen to opposing viewpoints,

  4. Stop complaining about the Politburo you keep re-electing. These fools didn’t fall into their positions, Anchorage chose them.
    You get the government you deserve.

    • Respectfully disagree, Avenger.
      .
      What Anchorage voters did not deserve was their Assembly forcing its easily corruptible mail-in ballot scheme on them.

  5. I am quite proud of how Austin and Kameron represent me and my district. Why are anonymous trolls against free and fair elections?

    • Not a single person here is against free and fair elections. We fully support them.
      .
      Fair means we all play by the same rules, and those rules are known to all individuals before the start.
      Free means no one is unduly denied their right to vote.
      .
      Free does not mean mailing ballots to every registered voter whether they wanted one or not. If you are not interested in the election to bother going to a polling place (or requesting an absentee ballot), sending you one anyway does not make the elections “free.”
      And, fair does not mean that ballot counting is declared over for the day, sending any observers home, but a bunch of people choose to continue counting votes without oversight. Fair does not mean storing blank ballots in the same room as those cast.
      Fair certainly does not mean pretending there is nothing to see here, when an odd event happens during ballot counting.

  6. Voting will never be fair and honest, I don’t trust dominion computer software, rank voting, dead people voting, people that moved to different state continues to vote. More registered voters than actual population. The Constitutional Republic is over. The 2020 elections were stolen.

  7. Simple enough, no?
    .
    The Assembly hires the municipal clerk, who serves at the pleasure of the Assembly..
    .
    The municipal clerks counts the votes when Assembly members run for election.
    .
    It’s a beautiful, symbiotic relationship.
    .
    Why should Bee Hanson be allowed to wreck it, or worse, possibly emerge as an elected municipal clerk who does -not- serve at the pleasure of the Assembly?

  8. While their were certainly people who ran as moderates, then revealed themselves to be Marxists (Kameron, et al), it’s also true the complacency of the Anchorage voter let these scoundrels in, and with the passage of mail in voting, your fates were sealed.

  9. This story highlights why election integrity should be Dunleavy’s highest priority. Mandatory felony charges for anyone caught engaging in election fraud with no chance of expunging their record if convicted. Mandatory sentencing guidelines of one year in prison with no chance of parole if convicted of election shenanigans! Only anti democracy tyrants would be against such measures.

  10. There needs to be a change within the assembly. There is no excuse for everything being wrong that the mayor suggests. It is time to monitor how your individual representative votes on the Anchorage City Council. If he or she is not voting for the good of the majority of the people they represent, then you decide their fate with your vote. Too late to gripe after the fact, so get out to vote and change the atmosphere. Nothing constructive will come out of our local government unless there is honest effort on both sides. Any and all election tampering or fraud should be a felony and dealt with when found.

  11. There needs to be a change within the assembly. There is no excuse for everything being wrong that the mayor suggests. It is time to monitor how your individual representative votes on the Anchorage City Council. If he or she is not voting for the good of the majority of the people they represent, then you decide their fate with your vote. Too late to gripe after the fact, so get out to vote and change the atmosphere. Nothing constructive will come out of our local government unless there is honest effort on both sides. Any and all election tampering or fraud should be a felony and dealt with when found.

    Please send me the copy of me “already saying this!

  12. I was also an attendee at Elections Central with Bee Hanson on Election Night. This was not the only incident that happened, but I can verify her account as one she told me that night. Any time an observer questioned something in objection to Ms Jones she would usually become upset. I objected to numbers not matching in Election Central on election night. When I discussed with Ms. Jones my concern, I did not think her explanation was a good answer and didn’t explain fully. So, as I am allowed to do I wrote a challenge. When I handed it to Ms. Jones, she became very upset and slung it back at me across her table. As a candidate in the April elections, I was extremely discouraged. In a recount I was given because it was so close out of over 75,000 votes 1100 were recounted. Believe me if you run for election you are at at the mercy of the city clerk and her decisions. The only thing you can do is appeal your challenges to the Election Commission who, at that time, sided with Ms.Jones regardless of your challenge. But that commission then was not partisan…..or says the Assembly. It is great we will now have some balance.

  13. Just more unsubstantiated right-wing nonsense about election integrity. May I remind Alaskans that Republicans won every major statewide election in 2020 and that Bronson won the mayoral contest in 2021. In some states that Trump lost, the other republicans running for statewide offices did quite well. Moreover, audits and recounts in most of the states in which the alleged fraud occurred have been overseen by Republican officials but have found no evidence of widespread fraud. The fraud that has been discovered involved Trump supporters voting in more than one state, or Trump supporters voting more than once in the same state. So while there has been almost no fraud uncovered, the fraud that has been uncovered involved Trump supporters trying to vote for him more than once. That hasn’t stopped Trump and right-wing conspiracy theorists from claiming that the Presidential vote in those states was fraudulent, but not the votes for the other statewide elections that were on the same ballot as the Presidential election and went for the Republican. It’s not terribly surprising that many have been deluded into believing that there are widespread fraud in recent elections. People these days believe almost anything they read on the internet. Like the QAnon conspiracy, or the claim that Pres. Obama is Muslin and was born in Kenya. Then there were the so-called scandals that Republicans manufactured during the Obama administration about Benghazi and the Clinton emails, We were constantly told that the Republicans were getting ready to reveal the smoking guns in those supposed scandals, but nothing was ever produced. All smoke and no fire. As soon as Clinton lost the 2016 election, there was nothing to be gained in continuing to pump up those conspiracy theories? People believed crazy stuff before the internet. For example,some people believed that the the US. Government faked the moon landings, or the conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination. I guess the b.s. claims that our elections are fraudulent have lots of company in the conspiracy theory hall of fame.

    • You know, Rick, the more you yammer on about radical leftist conspiracy theories and wild denial of reality, the more you expose your fundamental desperation in the face of more and more Americans waking up to the corruption and sheer evil that the contemporary radical left truly represents. I would almost pity you, if your comeuppance were not so well-deserved.

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