Important procedures are changing at the Anchorage Election Office for this municipal election that may address some of the concerns raised by election observers in years past, when volunteers watching the counting of ballots found fault with protocols established by Municipal Clerk Barb Jones, who retires in June.
The election ends April 4, and in addition to candidates for Assembly and School Board, there are three pages of propositions.
Here are some of the changes implemented:
Signature verification. In the past, the paid signature verifiers sat next to each other and verified voter signatures unilaterally, working individually. Now, two people will have to agree that signatures match or don’t match with what the Municipality has on file. If the two verifiers don’t agree, they discuss their different conclusions and continue until they come to a conclusion. If they agree that the signature matches, the ballot envelope can proceed to the next step, where the ballot gets separated from the envelope.
Green bins: When the voter signature is verified, the computer can then read the ballot. In the past, all the ballots went into green bins, which meant they were ready to be counted. But the election officials in past years had no idea how many ballots were in each bin, and numerous election workers had access to the locked cages where the ballot bins were kept. Now, every single green bin will have a printed sheet of paper attached to it that has the exact count of the ballots in that bin. Two human counters will count how many ballots are going into the bin, and how many envelopes have been separated from the ballots. Everyone with access to the cage must be accompanied by another employee who has similar access. This was a big issue with election observers in recent years.
Fax votes: The Municipal Election Office has never kept track of the number of faxed votes that were received. Now, it will be tracking those votes every day.
Computers don’t see red: The ballot reading machines do not see the color red. The bubbles that voters fill in are red. Observers were not able to tell where stray marks on ballots were, because the screen that observers were required to use did not show the red bubble outlines. Now, there is a new place where observers can go and look at the ballots themselves, so they can verify where the marks are on the ballot. Jones did not allow people to see these ballots in prior years.
Notification: In years past, Jones would not tell observers when the adjuration process would start, but miraculously some candidates, like Forrest Dunbar and Chris Constant, would show up right before ballot adjudication started. Observers for other candidates had to stay at in the building at all times to wait for when Jones would start an adjudication session. Now, the election office has established and published a schedule that gives the times for adjudication, signature verification, and sorting.
Ballots arrived in most Anchorage voters’ mailboxes this week and already the ballots are coming into the election office. You can watch the various cameras around the building at this YouTube channel.
So she gets one more election to question then adios sister good riddance.
Vote Mark Anthony Cox and Dave Donley for school board. Educate yourself in this, and every election, don’t vote based on billboards. Vote based on shared values.
There are I think 3000 school and municipal employees who have very high union directed turnout. So conservatives START with a 3000 vote deficit. Turn in your ballots.
MS Jones was certainly as much of a scallywag as is and was Dunbar and Constant along with a few others.
All these folks do not and never have had a soul or any honor.
Their behavior toward the citizenry is despicable.
And now we know ‘why’ Barbara Jones is choosing to retire at this time.
She no longer has complete control of the ballots.
Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of the lunatic Politburo wrecking the city.
I wonder, just where, and with whom, did these changes in procedure originate?
I have a hard time believing that our Marxist ass-embly would take ANY measures to legitimize this corrupt, untransparent and intermediated mail-in voting system to the detriment of their ability to control and manipulate it to their advantage.
In a genuinely red state she would be under investigation for election fraud.
Get red of the drop off boxes if you want to stop ballot harvesting! Everyone should be required to show a valid ID to vote.
1000 percent agree .
Why, on a live stream of the cameras is it showing daylight on the outside camera when it is clearly dark where I am in Anchorage. Is there a delay of a few hours?
Things have definitely gotten out of hand! I worry about shady practices at the polls. The last time I went to vote in Eagle River, while I was in the booth someone felt it was appropriate to start blasting music! I asked the poll workers to turn the music off but was ignored! It was actually one of the poll workers that had the music blastingIt! It was very obvious that other voters were irritated about it also.
This is a great step toward securing our elections. But no election will ever be secure until the machines are gone.
The best positive change would be to require in person voting, with photo ID. Only exceptions would be for those requiring an absentee ballot for justifiable reasons.
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I will bet the number/percentage of rejected ballots will drop significantly.
A lot of innuendo, all State laws were always followed in Anchorage Election protocols, Anchorage voter pareticipation is enhanced with mail-in ballots
I remember when we ran out of ballots for voters. I remember when a judge changed the law on the day of an election.
More gaslighting and pro-establishment propaganda from “frank rast”.
Everyone with any sense knows that mail-in voting was instituted to advance and secure the power of the radical leftist authoritarians over Anchorage. There is no other reason and justification for it whatsoever, all your disingenuous bilge spewed by you and other bootlicking lackeys for the Marxist Ten notwithstanding.
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How can you bear to be you?
By lazy hippies, How is that progress?
“Anchorage voter participation is enhanced with mail-in ballots”
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Sorry Frank, but I do not want more people voting. I want more INFORMED people voting, and the best way to ensure that is stop mailing out ballots to everyone, regardless of whether they want one or not. If you cannot be bothered to go to a polling place and vote, or take the action to request a mail in ballot, you are obviously not interested in local politics. Therefore, you are not informed on the issues, and not informed on the candidates. Net result, the person with the most advertising gets elected.
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If only 20% of the voters can be bothered to vote, fine, at least there is some assurance they are motivated.
When all of the voter information was stolen, were the voter’s signatures included in the stolen data?
Yes. You can contact State to confirm.
These are fantastic changes, especially keeping track of the green bin ballots. That eliminates ballot box stuffing.
This is our chance MRAKers. Procedures are better now LET”S VOTE these communists out!
Please be aware if one is mailing their ballot, it requires TWO stamps.
Ahh, I see another angle. Who would think of that?
Don’t let the door hit you in the derriere, Barb. Can’t stand her and the ADN and AK Public Media that never held her accountable for any of her pro leftist rhetoric and actions.
The positive change I’m still looking for is no more mail in ballots except for explicit absentee ballots that are requested with a stated reason, verified signature, and ID number. And no more Dominion.
AND voter registration should not be public.
Then one day of voting and one day of counting.
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