POSSIBLY ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN OF UNSOURCED POSTCARDS
The Alaska Democrats far outperformed their usual absentee vote turnout, and some politicos wondered what they did to add 9,000 Democrat absentee ballots to the primary tally, when in the past Democrats have not made the effort to get those absentee ballots, preferring the “vote early” method.
There may have been several factors, but one is an unseen that is likely the efforts of a third party like the Lincoln Project. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of handwritten postcards landed in the mailboxes of Alaskans from people out of state, from Connecticut to Hawaii.
Many of the messages were similarly worded: “Vote for Al Gross for Senate”. “Vote for Alyse Galvin for House.” “They’re independent but they’ll caucus with the Democrats.” “They will fight for affordable health care.” “They’ll end the hatred in politics.” And they all gave the web addresses of the campaigns they supported as a way to get an absentee ballot. Many of them use the same postage stamp pattern.
But none of the messages indicated that the letter-writing was paid for by any entity. There was no legal disclaimer, as required by law, even though there is evidence of a coordinated campaign that spent money on stamps, and possibly paid postcard writers: How else would these random people around the country get the addresses of undeclared and Democrat voters?
What group coordinated the campaign is hard to tell, but the Lincoln Project has already said it is going to be active in trying to flip the Alaska U.S. House and Senate seats blue, and is one of the likely suspects.
The bigger reason the Democrats came out, however, is that Democrats are more afraid of the COVID-19 coronavirus, and are choosing to vote absentee in greater numbers, while Republicans are voting absentee in the same general pattern as they have in the past.
