Sen. Mike Shower of Wasilla sent a letter to Alaska’s Acting Attorney General Ed Sniffen this week, requesting an investigation into election fraud in the November General Election in Alaska.
Shower says he has material to hand over to the Department of Law that should be of interest to the state, if not the federal law enforcement authorities.
Shower reached out to Alaskans on Facebook and asked them to provide him with concrete examples of fraud that they had witnessed. He said people sent him numerous anecdotes about receiving two or more ballots, and about people who voted in other states discovering that they had also voted in Alaska, and more.
Shower said he has gotten no response from the Division of Elections, and decided to elevate it, including notifying the Federal Bureau of Investigations with his findings.
Shower wrote that he was requesting a criminal investigation, and that he wants the Attorney General to seek assistance from the FBI to determine if federal crimes were committed with data breaches and mail fraud.
Shower was the author of 2019 legislation, Senate Bill 116, an “Election Integrity/Ballot Chain of Custody” proposal, addressing several concerns, including ending the practice of ballot destruction at the precinct level, establishing a secure chain of custody for all ballots, requiring the Division of Elections to notify voters when their votes were voided, and enacting new rules for cleaning up voter rolls. SB 116 would have also set up an elections fraud hotline to report suspicious activity. The bill failed to get even one hearing under Senate President Cathy Giessel. The bill was referred to the State Affairs Committee, which Shower chaired at the time.
“Following the recent primary and general elections, my office fielded hundreds of complaints from across Alaska regarding ballot harvesting, voters receiving multiple absentee ballots they never requested, and people who were prevented from voting for their own legislator due to erroneous information at their polling locations,” Shower said. “Our work on SB116 also revealed that the Division of Elections policy, not state statute, permits the Director [of the division] to unilaterally determine which votes should count and which do not if double voting occurs. I believe we must clarify DOE policy in statute rather than leaving it up to the discretion of a Director, which can change from administration to administration, to determine whose vote counts and whose will not.”
Sen. Shower said he has been working with the Lieutenant Governor’s Office and the Division of Elections to address several outstanding concerns.
“The situation is further exacerbated by the data breach which saw the personal information of over 113,000 Alaskans compromised,” he wrote. Shower is among those who received a letter from the Division of Elections saying their private information had been hacked by foreign operators.
“The data breach was not reported to the legislature, candidates, or the public until nearly a month after the election took place and after the election was certified. Since that time, some Alaskans have reported identity theft taking place which involves their personal information,” he said. Indeed, the announcement was not made by the Division of Elections until Dec. 3.
In a Georgia State Senate Judiciary Subcommittee meeting on Dec. 30, Committee Chairman Sen. William Ligon, heard testimony from experts and witnesses regarding the State of Georgia’s Election Integrity. Throughout the hearing, the issues raised included reference to four states that experienced similar anomalies; Alaska was mentioned as one of them during the hearing, with a claim that Alaska experienced an 8 percent “overvote,” representing 43,000 more ballots cast than there are eligible voters in Alaska.
“In light of all the information being shared with our office and now on the record in other states which are experiencing similar election issues, it is imperative that we investigate these issues very closely. What we have found on our own, with limited resources, has raised more questions than answers. Our election system is too important to take any one of these issues lightly, much less all of them in one election cycle. I look forward to continued work with the Lt. Governor and the Division of Elections on strengthening our Statewide elections system. We must do everything in our power as elected officials to protect every Alaskan’s privacy and ensure the integrity of, and confidence in, our voting system,” Shower wrote.
