A reader poll at Must Read Alaska reveals that 97% of over 600 participants believe the Alaska Division of Elections should release the raw data from the Nov. 5 election, rather than sit on that data and not release it until after the ranked-choice calculation is completed by the computers later this month.
Due to Alaska’s complicated voting system, some races in Alaska cannot be called because the computers at the State election office must perform the extra step of reassigning second- and third-choice votes. The entire nation is now waiting on Alaska to complete the congressional race, for example, since neither candidate Nick Begich nor incumbent Mary Peltola reached the 50% + 1 vote threshold to win.
But the Division of Elections has the existing, already counted second- and third-place votes in hand and those data files are being kept secret from the campaigns and the public.
Must Read Alaska has filed a public records request with the division to release the data that it has, since this is public information and there is no legal reason to not provide it.
The first time ranked-choice voting was used in Alaska — in November of 2022 — the data was not released until after the division had already run the calculation, which gave Peltola the win over Sarah Palin. After that, the Election Division posted the raw data on its website and data analysts were able to see what occurred in the election.
As Alaska’s elections are run now, the public won’t know who won that seat until Nov. 20 — 15 days after the election ends. There is no law requiring that secrecy. If the data was released earlier, the campaigns could analyze it and understand whether or not there is truly a path forward for them.
The current standing in the Begich-Peltola race is that Begich is ahead with 125,222 votes, and Peltola has 115,089 votes. Third-party candidate John Wayne Howe has 9,880, and Democrat Eric Hafner has 2,492. Begich has a vote lead of over 10,000 votes; there are believed to be about 45,000 more votes to be counted before the Division will, after Nov. 15, run its calculation to determine where the straggler ranking votes are assigned.
Better idea- ditch the dominion voting machines. At $70,000 a pop for rental, they cost too much. The integrity of dominion is very questionable. I trust “betty” the volunteer to count votes more than I do a machine whose source code is proprietary and locked away from public view.
Ditch RCV- If you’re having to pick 2nd 3rd 4th choice for a candidate, it’s not really a election any more, it’s just rating from crap candidate to crappiest candidate.
I totally agree and can we ditch lawer Scott too?
This kind of mayhem is exactly the reason Lisa Murkowski hired Scott Kendall to work up the rank choice voting. Today we are not getting results because Dahlstrom was beat by Begich and she has an ax to grind. Its real easy to work the northern villages and Dahlstrom knew it. The votes there have the opportunity of being re done by villagers, voting machines or as in the prior vote period the problems for voting were never taken care of by the Division of elections. Remember that the time Murkowski was put in the Senate job and every voter in the state was disenfranchised at the time by Frank Murkowski and Lisa Murkowski. Any person that follows them, helps create the problem.
Common sense would prevail. I do not believe common sense exists inside the State of Alaska guberment….
I didn’t pick 2nd, 3rd anything. I only voted for who I thought was best. 1 vote per position.
The DNC is stressing about the RNC having both the Senate and the House. I am wondering if that is why it is taking so long to get these votes back. I have my suspicions that Peltola is suddenly going to have just enough votes to stay even though a great number of people in the villages did not vote for her
The Steal Failed… That’s why the numbers are being hidden… They don’t want Americans to know Trump probably got well over 100 million votes… And that was just to get a lesser of evil controlled opposition puppet installed… But now that the majority is aware that the system is rigged against them what else are they going to find out ???
Great reporting Suzanne. You should not hesitate to include in these articles that you’ve reached out to the Lt. Gov. for comment, and she said________________________.
These people, who are supposed to be in charge, should be held to account by being forced to go on record to defend the actions of their departments.
Elections are, literally, her job:
“Summary
The Alaska lieutenant governor has eleven (11) statutory duties. These duties include
supervising the division of elections and its related functions and duties, and working on state
history, regulations, workforce, and supervising citizen ballot initiatives. “
If Dahlstrom does anything on this issue it will be the first official act she has performed in office. What a useless bag.
Without complete transparency with every step of the process showing how our election winners are SELECTED, many of us will have no faith that these SELECTIONS are on the level. We have a broken Government Nationally and at the State level. We have Traitors to the American Ideals enumerated in our Constitution and Laws that have taken over our government at all levels. The corruption is on full display for anyone looking to see. If we continue to accept this degenerate slide to this level of corruption, we will surely lose this great nation to the jaws of Communism and Marxism and will likely slide into history as another failed experiment of Government.
Exactly right.
We can talk about this all day long but TALK IS CHEAP!!!!! Exactly HOW, do he get the results of our votes!!!
What it would take to get the information would be considered an “insurrection” and the FBI would be called in with no knock warrants in hand to seize and interrogate grandmothers across the state who would actually like to see the proof of the ballot counting process.
They would then become permanent residents at the goose creek senior citizens resort and not allowed to vote due to hampering the selection process of rigged choice voting.
We were reminded numerous times by the Biden’s Harris and Pelosi that Democracy is at stake and we should all be patient while they are protecting us from fascism and the Nazi’s.
Hey Alaskans,
My earlier petition caught Dahlstrom’s attention after she dropped out of the race against Begich. You’d think she’d want to be as transparent as possible, especially with the governorship within reach. We’ll need to remember this when she runs again. It’s disappointing that we have to resort to shaming people into doing their jobs.
Petition should be at this link: ‘https://chng.it/sd6dMD9qGr
Rank choice finagling.
Has anyone else noted that public confidence in the election process dropped like a rock when we abandoned the idea of “election day”? Vastly expanded absentee voting, weeks and weeks of “early” voting, mail-in elections, and the worst of all, “ranked-choice” voting: Each has injected uncertainty and the potential for fraud. (Who actually marks those mail-in ballots? Do you know or only just assume it’s all cool?). My suggestion: Except for overseas absentee ballots, narrow the balloting process down to ONE week and only at designated voting locations. Making voting easier has also made it much easier for confusion and corruption.
Really unconscionable and all the more proof RCV is corrupt and needs to be ditched. The ‘system’ the rural areas have to follow if wide open for cheating, the delays enhance that opportunity.
The ballot measures are not decided by RCV so there is no reason to not release the results, RCV has caused this problem which is another reason why it needs to go.
Agreed….there is only 2 districts not reporting right now with a total of 851 votes….STILL not enough to defeat the YES on BM#2 which defeats RCV…I suspect they are trying their level best to keep the “window” open to allow more NO votes to trickle in EVEN though the rest of the districts have reported. Lets just hope they stand their ground and don’t let any “whoops these should have been counted before the polls closed” votes, I.E. Votes to tip the balance in favor of keeping it when it has obviously been defeated.
We all need the data now. How can we confirm that the “calculations” are correct if we don’t have access to it? You know what they say, “garbage in, garbage out.” Computers can be flawed. We need the check and balance to ensure the numbers are calculated correctly. Let us know if we can sign a petition, or how else we can help.
Cockroaches hate the light!
Remember Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz? At the end, Glynda tells her that the Ruby slippers had the power all along to get her back to Kansas. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked. Glynda: “You wouldn’t have believed me.”
ALL ALONG the 2020 vote that gave us RCV was unconstitutional and illegal because it violated that single issue rule, found in both statutory and constitutional law. Yet the judiciary, a tool of liberalism, force-fed it to us.
But the GOVERNOR has the power to intercept an overthrow of the constitution by any department or branch of government — except the legislature.
Right now, if he had the courage, he could say, “By the power invested in me by the Constitution, I rule that RCV has all along been a violation of both statutory and constitutional law. I will not enforce its illegal outcomes and declare that all elections go by the candidate with the most votes.”
Yeah, I know he won’t do it. But until conservatives themselves wake up to the boondoggle we have been suffering under, and truly become constitutionalists, we will continue playing a game where referees and umpires keep changing the rules. It’s like playing the Yankees and in the middle of the game, the umpires rule that they get 4 outs per inning. Or a football game where the refs keep moving the goal-line. Or a hockey game where one side gets a permanent extra attacker.
Stop crying that we need an initiative or the Democrat-controlled legislature to repeal RCV. If the governor heard an overwhelming number of conservative voices talking “constitution” instead of “repeal”, he MIGHT find the courage.
I am as deeply involved as anyone in election reform. I can confirm without question most of the issues regarding timeline of data released as well as what is released, is entirely policy. In other words, the Lt Gov and director of the division of elections can choose to release the raw data. I have provided a list of policy/regulation items which can be changed without legislation to officials for years running. So far, no one has chosen to act upon those items. Being forced to direct, via legislation, these changes are far more difficult and cumbersome. I have filed and worked on election reform legislation, including a repeal of RCV this last session, for 7 years. I was informed by senate leadership last session my RCV repeal bill wouldn’t even get one hearing, and it didn’t. I was informed by the democrats in charge of the committees since the senate is really under democrat control, none of my election reform bills would see the light of day, they didn’t. With Dem Chris Tuck in the House and I in the senate, 4 years ago he and I had a bipartisan bill which made it through both bodies and had a good chance to pass – but “they” added two entire bills to our election bill with a 31 page amendment (as large as the original bill itself) – in the last hour of the 2 year session. Chris and I had to kill the bill because there was no way to understand what that huge amendment did. That is the closest we have been to a balanced election bill since I have been there in 2018. Rep Vance had a clean voter roll cleanup bill last session which passed the House almost unanimously (it’s a version of a bill I had for several years). But, again, the democrat controlled senate loaded it up with democrat left wing ideas, and even in the end took out the very portion of her bill that cleaned up voter rolls… SMH. So I recommended to her and the speaker of the House they should kill that bill and right before midnight on the last night they were able to – barely. My sincere hope is they people have done what the legislature failed to do – and that is rid Alaska of this terrible voter suppression scheme of RCV. It’s CRYSTAL clear the people of Alaska don’t want it. Even with almost $14 MILLION dollars spent to “save” RCV – almost all from outside Alaska dark money – to only $130,000 of almost all money from inside Alaska to fight for repeal – RCV is still losing. If we had even half the amount they did to counter all the lies and negative misleading ads about RCV the repeal would already be complete. The repeal of RCV will solve the problems we haven’t by returning us to a simple, easy to understand system of one person, one vote. It will make the job easier to continue the battle to enact some common sense election reform like ballot tracking, ballot curing, voter roll cleanup, cyber security, etc. I would like to return to hand counts unless we can move towards open source machines where everyone can inspect them. There are many other things we can do. Step one – lets get the final result we are “still” waiting on to know for sure RCV is repealed.
Mike, talk is cheap. Until we get the Rinos out of the House and Senate, there will be no action that benefits the Alaskans in a constitutional way. But, everyone keeps falling for the cheap talk.
Sorry Mike. Dahlstrom has you on ignore. And she probably won’t admit to reading MRAK or it’s comments because she was humiliated before dropping out of the Begich race.
I hope prop 2 passes so we don’t have that excuse next time.
Dunleavy needs to kick her butt and get this done now.
Remember they both are responsible for making Alaska look like lazy idiots when it comes to elections. When they run in the next elections.
Makes sense now why the FBI pre positioned agents out west ahead to assist in the ballot counting process.
A lot at stake, control of the House and maintaining RCV for the Murkowski dynasty.
Alaska elections are a process to maintain power and control of the colony called Alaska.
Dunleavy’s silence is telling, full on Uniparty.
What happens if people didn’t rank their votes?
Manda: Then their votes will not be ranked. Vote once and it’s one and done.
Yes, I was informed by a “well-known” person who knows about the “rank” choice system, they said don’t rank..in other words vote like it WASN’T rank choice and always rank your one person as first choice..
Isn’t Nancy Dahlstrom in charge of the Division of Elections? Why isn’t she reporting the facts to the public? How could we trust her as a hard working governor, if we can’t trust her as a hard working elections director?
Remember the good old days when John Tracy and Maria Downey covered the election results? All the candidates were there along with their campaigne workers, holding signs and such. Excitement in the air. And every little bit new numbers would come in and by the end of the night, we knew who won. I miss those days. This is maddening!
The outcome of every election since caveman days has always been subject to change by absentees, overseas and questioned ballots dribbling in after election day. That fact is not changed by rank-choice-voting; late arriving ballots could change the outcome of an RCV election too. So what? They should show us the current effect of allocating the 2nd and 3rd rank votes; if the consequences change with additional ballot counting, we can handle it. As long as everything is done in the light of day to avoid the appearance of scurrilous activity then we can handle any outcome. Apparently the Election Division, or the Lt Governor, are so dim they don’t understand the importance of the appearance of strict propriety. Hiding numbers from us is horrible optics. It gives the appearance of behind-closed-doors cheating. Why are they following such a stupid course? The answers are not appealing.
It takes awhile for the ink to dry on those ballots.
Here’s a scary thought:
There is rumor of Dunleavy becoming Sec. Interior. That would put Dahlstrom in the big chair.
People need to let President Trump know that Dunleavy is not a person to have on his team. Rino through and through.
It isn’t who votes, it’s who counts the votes….it’s looking a little sheisty
Let’s all not forget , Barry Obama !! all through out his administration and especially the last few years. Obama was criss crossing the Country in certain areas teaching many how to Community organize and circumvent a lot of things, unfortunately he went to many areas where the zombie affect inflicted many minds . Including Western Alaskans..You can literaly draw a Clear strait line to this latest ballot fraud nonsense in our country, and All this bubbling over resentment and animosity in this country from the left, strait to Barry. This guy was the biggest Grifter and Divider and rabble rouser ever in politics , and many low IQ people fawned over him like a god! Yes little old frale Barry and his Nutty friends have been behind the scenes working his smoke and mirrors brainwash and deceit tactics since he left office, he and several others are directly behind all this voting fraud ! Obama did more to divide this country in 8 years than all other presidents combined in our entire history. and he’s still trying to now. obama is a evil person who got rich from becoming a president, a total con man!!
Ranked choice voting allowed the government to hand Lisa Murkowski the election that she rightfully lost. Ranked choice will do the same thing this year, the government is going to cram Mary Peltola down our throat even though Nick Begich is the actual winner.
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