On Thursday, Aug. 8, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly will hear Resolution 2024-27, a matter that was originally to to be heard at the last Assembly meeting, but which was waylaid when the Assembly failed to complete its agenda.
This resolution, sponsored by Assembly presiding officer (and Senate candidate) Savannah Fletcher, creates a committee of out of left-leaning community organizations to move the borough elections to mail-in voting. The mail-in ballot system of voting is already used to elect members to Golden Valley Electric Association, and mail-in elections are used in Anchorage and Juneau, among other places.
What is mail-in voting?
For those unfamiliar with mail-in voting, this is not the same as absentee voting. In absentee voting, the resident voter affirmatively applies for the ballot, receives the ballot, votes the ballot, has it witnessed, and returns the ballot. While not perfect, it does have a chain of custody.
Mail-in voting is a system where ballots are mailed to everyone, and people return their ballots in the mail or to a drop box. This system was used by the Alaska Division of Elections in 2020. The division mailed ballots to all eligible senior citizens in the state, under the auspices of not wanting to expose seniors to Covid in 2020.
There are significant issues with these mail-in elections.
The first issue is local control. Do the people of the Fairbanks North Star Borough want their elections controlled by cleverly chosen community groups (Get Out the Native Vote and League of Women Voters are the ones listed in the resolution) or cede control of their elections to other boroughs, the way Juneau ceded control of its mail-in elections to Anchorage when it started mail-in elections in 2020?
People in the FNSB, an independent bunch, will probably want to retain control of their own elections, lest they become another Anchorage, controlled by Marxists on the Assembly. Yet the only cost effective means of utilizing mail-in voting is to farm it out to Anchorage. Juneau did that before deciding to pay $700,000 for its own vote-counting center, something used only once a year. The carrying costs for the city of 32,000 are absurd.
Second, Alaska has bloated voter rolls. A large part of the FNSB population is transient due to the military, university, tourism, and other reasons. When people move, they often forget to “unregister,” to vote. They are often more concerned about other matters than their voter registration. Ballots are going to arrive at their old address — you can take that to the bank.
In fact, one local storage unit business owner said that he has a very high return rate — nearly 80% of notices the business sends in the mail are returned. Many people often assume when they get to their new location, their registration at their new place will automatically unregister them from their old addresses. There is some chance of that happening if a person is moving within Alaska, but it often does not occur if the person is moving outside of Alaska. It can take years to remove a person from the voter rolls. This means hundreds of ballots will be unnecessarily printed, and money wasted on printing and postage.
The vote will be less secure. The result of these ballots being mailed out to everyone is that ballots are then available to the person who assumes the old address. Somes people put their ballot in the trash at the post office, and there are numerous stories of people walking into post offices and finding unvoted ballots in the trash. This leaves the chain of custody of the vote wide open and reduces the integrity of the election process.
The chain-of-custody issue is real. Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2000 Mules highlights the chain-of-custody issues involved in using mail-in voting. Ballots can be stolen out of mail boxes and voted by others. Apartment complex trash cans will be filled with the ballots of past tenants. Ballots mailed to long -moved residents be acquired and voted. All of this undermines the confidence that people have in the election process.
The cost savings are an illusion and do not hold up to the promise of increased voter participation. While some argue mail in ballots are cheaper than hiring election judges, the postage and printing costs are not cheap. In Anchorage, there is hardly any difference in the cost per ballot, between the old system of voting at the polls and the mail system and participation rates have hardly changed. Staffing call-in lines and help centers is also not cheap. For the voter, this can be very time consuming; some voters recently spent hours on the phone with the help line at GVEA mail-in election.
Tale of Two Concurrent Elections
Two different elections held over a similar geography and time frame recently occured to provide a stark contrast: The FNSB special election on May 7 and the GVEA Election.
The May 7 election was undertaken with voting at the polls, early voting, and absentee voting.
The GVEA election was mail-in voting. According to its website, GVEA has 36,176 members, and in the borough-wide election, 4,063 ballots were cast on either side of the by-law vote. Assuming each member received one ballot, that is an 11% participation rate. Granted, the by-law issue was not as compelling as tax hike, but that is still pretty low, and much lower than typical borough elections.
The May 7 election had the highest turn out in 10 years: 23.4%, with over 76,000 ballots cast. This would seem to suggest that a move to mail-in voting would result in significantly lower voter turn out.
The cost of the GVEA election was greater than the May 7 special election cost. Excluding media spending by the FNSB school district, which was not unsubstantial, the FNSB had allocated $125,000 for the special election. That included printing, staff time, paying election workers, and other costs related to the election.
In contrast, GVEA spends roughly $25,000 in printing and mailing ballots per district. Of the 7 GVEA districts, 6 are squarely in the FNSB borough. That means GVEA actually spends more than the borough on elections, and achieves half the participation rate.
If the objective is to increase voter turnout in the FNSB, it seems clear mail-in voting would be detrimental to voter participation and is provably more costly to implement. If the objective is indeed to increase voter turnout, mail-in voting is not the solution. It may be right for some communities, but experiences in Anchorage and Juneau should be instructive: It will absolutely cost more money. It may result in the same or lower voter turnout. The ballots will be less secure.
Readers who wish to weigh in on the resolution can write their Fairbanks borough assembly at [email protected] or call the borough clerk at 907 459 1401 to sign up to testify in person or by phone.
I can sum it up easily.
-it’s a stupid idea.
-Fletcher is a ham handed political operator who will not go away. The GOP needs to try to make a plan to politically neuter her.
Yes, MA. Send her to LGBTQ rehab camp, after her proposal is flushed down the toilet where it belongs. Maybe Mike Cronk will have video rolling for his next campaign ad.
Savannah is starting to look more Fidel Castro every day
Problem is no one reported this to the public. Kinda like hiding RCV with the revealing dark money prop.
I just received a vote by mail from the Republican Party with my name and address.
I do not want this mail and will not support any party as they both are bad for this country.I trued to get off the list and they wanted more personal information from me.
Way to much lying cheating and false promises from the politicians and their followers.
Do not vote for or support mail on voting.
Ummm….
There is this thing called the trash bin. Just toss unwanted mail there.
Or better yet there Me. Tec. Just lay on top or next to the table of P.O. Box location. Stacks and stacks available for those that advocate for this charade of a legitimate voting process. To be abused. Obviously you condone and back the process? This has done more to disenfranchise more voters than any other scheme. Next….. no signature verification ?
Enlighten me here.
What did I write that indicates I condone and back this process?
Kamala is counting on you. Good job.
She can count all the way to one as I am spreading the word about her piss pour job she has done.
But your insistence on not voting invalidates everything you may do.
Do as I say, not as I do doesn’t motivate people.
Mark was that an absentee ballot application you received? The AK GOP was pushing for that years ago ostensibly to counter the democrats ground game since they get help from the press, unions, etc. I’m not sure how I feel about that but just checking because absentee ballot chasing is different than mass mail in ballots sent to everyone. A LOT of people get the applications sent to them – you shouldn’t be getting an actual ballot in the mail unless you requested one. If you did you should contact Div of Elections because that’s a problem.
Only people who want to reduce overall election security, I can only assume for nefarious purposes, push for mail in voting.
Everyone else that want their elections to be secure, and an accurate representation of the public’s voice reject mail in voting.
Savannah’s last chance to stab a knife into the heart of Fairbanks conservatives. Pissed off they lost the tax cap cap bypass. I am afraid where Savannah will show up next when she loses to Cronk.
Her desire to turn us into a socialist he’ll hole knows no bounds.
The GVEA election did not apply to the majority of its members. The two candidates who ran were restricted to a small geographic area. There is no legitimate comparison of the GVEA vote to the special election about the tax cap.
Another correction: Thursday’s FNSB Assembly meeting will only address the question of appointing a task force to explore the possibility of adding mail-in ballots as an option. There is no plan to institute mail-in only ballots as the article implies.
SA, you are providing false information. GVEA did have a member wide bylaw election:
‘https://www.gvea.com/about-us/your-cooperative/bylaws-articles-of-incorporation/
Mail in voting invites fraud. Currently voting takes about as much effort as going to Starbucks. We want informed votes. If people refuse to take the slightest effort every few years, then they are not likely to be informed voters.
Fletcher can not be trusted. She hates the fact that voters rejected her insane property tax hike by a 2 to 1 margin. She has no respect for the voters- which is why she tried to overturn a voter approved tax cap that has been in place for 30 years.
Who want to look like Anchorage? If you want that, move there!
But, wait…
Didn’t we just see an article where early voting is delayed because the Division of Elections could not get the materials delivered in time?
But… I am supposed to believe mail in voting perfectly safe, secure, and accurate.
My husband and I received official mail from the local election office with incorrect information, first and middle names were right but our last names didn’t match. I will continue to cast my ballot in person, as is my right to participate in the democratic process.
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