At the first meeting of the year of the Anchorage Election Commission, the first order of business on the agenda was to elect a new chair. Two new members had joined the commission and the previous chairwoman’s term had expired.

Commission member Glennis Ireland was nominated, and so was former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, who was recently appointed to the commission by Mayor Dave Bronson. Even Ireland agreed that Leman should be chair.

But Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones, could not contain herself. Although she is merely staff to the commission, which oversees her work in the Election Office and is tasked with ensuring the public’s confidence in free and fair elections, Jones interrupted the commission meeting and said that Leman does not have the experience to chair the commission.

Leman, an Alaska Native and graduate of Stanford University with a master’s degree in civil engineering and a professional certification known as a P.E., was lieutenant governor of Alaska between 2002 and 2006. The lieutenant governor has oversight for the Division of Elections, which runs state elections, and also local elections for unorganized regions of the state called REAAs, and it manages services such as voter registration. The division keeps voting statistics, maintains candidate registration and eligibility lists, and trains hundreds of workers across the state on the rules for in-person, absentee, and special needs voting. The division develops information in many languages, provides audits of elections, and creates transparency.

Leman was the first person of Alaska Native ancestry to be elected to statewide office in Alaska, and he also was elected to represent Anchorage in both the House and the Senate, where he served as majority leader. He has taught the U.S. Constitution to youth through the Boys and Girls Club. For over 40 years he has worked in the private sector on transporation and engineering projects of great complexity across the entire state.

But Jones didn’t want him to chair the commission and she made it known on the record.

“I’m gonna, as a staffer, Mr. Leman has never served on the election commission and has not worked in an Anchorage election. He has worked for the State of Alaska. I think it will be a huge disadvantage to the election workers and election officials. We have a new commissioner who does not know what the commission is doing,” she said.

Former Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, also new on the Election Commission, had just nominated Leman to be the chair of the commission, and he registered his objection to what Jones had just said.

“That statement where you said you believe Loren is disqualified. You’re the City Clerk and you work for all of us and I hope you don’t believe that Loren is disqualified. I’ve worked with him and have known him for almost 40 years. And I’ve worked with him at the local, state, and national level on different issues.”

Treadwell pointed out that Mayor Bronson is attempting to change the Clerk’s position to one that would be voted on by the people, rather than appointed by the Assembly. And that she had now disqualified a nominee to chair the commission.

“That doesn’t feel right to me,” Treadwell said in the meeting.

Leman also commented: “Barbara, I didn’t come to cross swords with you but frankly I am appalled at you stepping in … and I consider you and others here to be staff to the commission. I have served on other commissions for the Municipality of Anchorage and I have never seen somebody step in and try to dominate a commission. The commissioners are responsible for commission business and I respect your years of service, and your experience, but for you to do what you did, I consider it to be out of order. Quite frankly, I’m offended by it.”

The audio on this incident is at this link.

In the end, the vote was taken, and the members who had been appointed by prior liberal mayoral administrations chose Ireland to chair the commission, with Treadwell and Leman voting in the minority.

Missing from the meeting was Bee Hanson, who had been nominated by Mayor Bronson but rejected by the Anchorage Assembly majority because she had challenged Clerk Jones over an incident that occurred in the most recent election of May, 2021. Jones had lied to Hanson on election night, telling her that all observers were to leave the building as all the staff work was done for the night. Hanson later returned to the building to discover that the workers had stayed long after the observers had gone home under Jones’ instruction.

Bee Hanson’s account to the Anchorage Assembly at this link.

The Anchorage Election Office, run by Jones, has come under scrutiny since the Anchorage Assembly voted to create all mail-in elections, which operate in very different ways than traditional in-person and absentee voted elections.

Numerous people are finding their votes disqualified in this new system because their signatures do not match the ones that Jones has on file, which are primarily provided by drivers license signatures from state records. When the Anchorage Election Office managed the October election for Juneau, which was an all-mail-in election, one out of every 12.5 votes was thrown out for various reasons.