A bizarre election fraud case involving a nearly forgotten Alaska state representative will possibly begin Monday, after dozens of delays.
The trial for former Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux has been postponed and rescheduled numerous times since she and two others were indicted for voter misconduct for actions they allegedly took during the 2018 election involving LeDoux’s reelection campaign.
As of Friday, the trial is now set for Nov. 18 at 8:30 a.m. in Room 603 of the Nesbett Courthouse in Anchorage, with Judge Kevin Saxby presiding. She is represented by attorney Kevin Fitzgerald.
In July, Lisa Simpson, formerly Lisa Vaught, signed a plea agreement for her role in the fraud. Simpson is the former chief of staff and was the campaign manager for LeDoux. Simpson had faced five charges of voter misconduct, some of them felony charges. She may be a witness in the case against LeDoux, should it proceed.
In 2018, LeDoux won the Republican primary against challenger Aaron Weaver and then the general election against Democrat Lyn Franks and write-in candidate Jake Sloan. She then lost the Republican primary in 2020 to David Nelson. But there was evidently some illegal voter registrations being done on her behalf to get more votes secured for her.
In 2020, LeDoux and Simpson were charged with voter misconduct and unlawful interference with voting after an investigation by the FBI and the Alaska State Troopers stemming from the registration of Simpson’s son and other voters as voters in LeDoux’s district, part of East Anchorage that was then District 15, during the 2018 election.
On June 2, 2021, an Anchorage grand jury indicted Gabrielle LeDoux, Lisa (Vaught) Simpson, and [her son, who was exploited] on multiple counts of voter misconduct in the first degree. These charges stem from the investigation that started in 2018 after the Division of Elections identified some irregularities in some of the absentee ballot applications and absentee ballots returned for the primary election for House District 15. The Alaska State Troopers, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, conducted the investigation.
In the years that have passed, at least one witness has died. Charlie Chang, a Democrat who LeDoux paid and brought in as a consultant from California to help her interface with the Hmong community in her district, suddenly died in California, according to LeDoux.
LeDoux, who is an attorney, was 72 when she was indicted. Now 76 years old, she has been able to hold off justice for four years for the allegedly illegal series of events that occurred six years ago.
The delays in this trial have been extraordinary, as this calendar of events shows:
Breaking: Grand jury indicts former Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux for voter fraud
Who is Robert Delaware? Why does he care about Charlie Chang?