Sen. Lisa Murkowski has steered clear of endorsing fellow Republican Mayor Dave Bronson in the Anchorage election. Both Sen. Dan Sullivan and Gov. Mike Dunleavy have endorsed Bronson, as has former Mayor Dan Sullivan, also a Republican.
In fairness, Bronson didn’t endorse Murkowski for her reelection in 2022. But in 2024, Murkowski is once again on the record for endorsing Rep. Mary Peltola for House, and Nikki Haley for president, while saying twice on the record that she’s not certain about her future as a member of the Republican team.
On Saturday, Murkowski broadcast her love of mail-in elections by posting on social media that she was happy to be voting by mail in the Anchorage election, which ends Tuesday at 8 p.m. As of the close of business on Friday, 36,569 ballots had been logged in at the Anchorage Election Office.
Murkowski could have always voted from home through the long-established practice of absentee voting, and she probably did so before the liberal Anchorage Assembly moved the city voting into a mail-in ballot starting in 2018, with very few opportunities now for people to vote in person. The mail-in ballot ends up with a high number of spoiled ballots, when the signature verification process fails, as it has in Anchorage.
In 2022, one in every 100 ballots was rejected due to signature verification failures. Although the Anchorage election office sends a notification to the voter whose ballot has been rejected that they need to come in and “cure” their sick ballot, many people are out of town and don’t get the notice in time. It’s not clear how many ballots were cured in 2022
In 2021, 1,052 ballots were rejected due to signatures not matching. It’s unclear how many of those people were able to “cure” their ballots.
This year, voters can cure their ballots without ever going into the Election office. In one more step away from election security, voters can text “Anchorage” to the number 28683. They will get a text reply with a link to click that allows them to sign again from their phone. But the voters will also need to enter their State of Alaska voter ID number, affirm it was they who returned the ballot, sign the affidavit on their phone, take a photo of their official ID and hit the submit button.
