The Anchorage Municipal Clerk released a new ballot count today: Her election office counted another 2,600 ballots in the Anchorage mayoral runoff election between Dave Bronson and Forrest Dunbar.
Bronson has pulled ahead with a 1,212-vote lead, with 45421 votes for Bronson, to Dunbar’s 44,209 votes.
According to the “white board” at the Election Office, Clerk Barbara Jones has another 1,900 ballots to count. An additional 1,100 ballots have problems with them and need to be “cured” by Friday. The “white board” has frequently been inaccurate but is the only solid information Must Read Alaska has, as of Tuesday evening.
The Bronson campaign has had an aggressive curing program in place since last Wednesday, with dozens of volunteers working the phones, but the Dunbar campaign was slow to the process of reaching out to voters whose ballots didn’t get counted and helping them fix the errors.
Bronson’s attorney Stacey Stone sent a letter to Jones today, asking for greater cooperation with the Bronson campaign, which has felt harassed and snubbed by Jones and some of her staff in the Election Office. Jones has brought up grievances about Must Read Alaska to various volunteers.
Stone wrote that on Monday, Jones issued a press release saying no results would be released that day.
“This, in spite of the understanding that there are at least a few thousand ballots in the Clerk’s possession. As I’m sure you can appreciate, uncertainty in the results of the election breeds distrust. Therefore, we would appreciate notice as to when the ballots currently in the Clerk’s possession will be counted,” Stone wrote.
Volunteers on the Bronson campaign say they cannot get information from the Clerk about which ballots have already been cured, so Stone asked that the Clerk provide that information daily.
Jones may be slowing down the count in order to give the Dunbar campaign more time and encouragement to get its curing program going. The ballots must be cured by Friday.
Indeed, volunteer observers reported to Must Read Alaska that they had the distinct impression the election workers had slowed down the pace on purpose.
The majority of the ballots that need curing are from Democrats, which would mean Dunbar may be able to help cure enough ballots and bring his total within one-half percent of Bronson’s, which would trigger an automatic recount.
Curing ballot isn’t a problem in a normal election, but in this mail-in election, more than one out of every 100 ballots cast in the mayoral race needed to be cured. Most of them will probably go uncured because of the short time period to finish the task, and the fact that some voters whose ballots didn’t count never received a letter from the Clerk about their status. Others were out of town and are not available to go through the curing process.
Anyone else feeling dejavu?
The Muni Clerk needs to be relieved of her duties and Fired. This is unacceptable and if she can not be unbiased she does not need to be employed.
“Cure” the ballots…
Here let me help!!
NO MORE MAIL IN BALLOTS!!
There cured it for you
Stalling.
They’ve been told to wait until the $51.1 million in American Recovery Plan funds are spent before new mayor is sworn in.
An acting, unelected mayor and “friends” spending all that covid money on whatever they deem it for.
UNBELIEVABLE.
They are cheating in plain site and will continue to do so unless somehow stopped/
Anchorage is a corrupt leftist liberal democrat city.
Positive attitude! Positive attitude! As long as they count correctly and fairly. Bronson and Dunbar team watchers better have LOT’S of coffee provided for them to stay awake hahaha
Muni Clerk is waiting for that 3 am ballot delivery truck. Keep vigilant, Bronson. They will try something at the last hour.
Are we talking about epic conflict of interest and mail fraud?
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Jones is an Assembly employee who worked for Dunbar and Dunbar’s Assembly colleagues before the election.
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In other words, Jones served, and continues to serve, at the pleasure of Dunbar, a former Assembly Chair, and his Assembly colleagues.
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Now Dunbar is running for mayor.
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Now Jones is counting Dunbar’s votes.
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Jones, an Assembly employee is counting votes for Dunbar, an Assembly official and Jones’ boss, who happens to be running for mayor.
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Jones has helpers to count votes. We assume the Assembly hires and pays them too.
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We’ve heard nothing from Jones and her team about recusing themselves from vote counting because: (a) one of their employers is running for mayor, (b) other Assembly members strongly support him, (c) other Assembly members visit Jones’ vote-counting site, and (d) Jones and team counting their employer’s votes looks, at best, like a huge conflict of interest.
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There’s another problem.
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Ballots arrive at Jones’ office by U.S. mail and by electronic mail.
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One might ask: (a) if Jones and her team are found to have conflict of interest but are counting votes anyway, are they committing election fraud, and (b) if Jones and team have a conflict of interest but are counting ballots from U.S. mail and electronic mail, are they committing mail and wire fraud?
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We have no confidence in ballot “curing”. How often have you taken a test, then been allowed to go back and change your answers, or been called by the teacher weeks later to correct your answers, or had the test corrected for you?
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This much ballot “curing” rather strongly suggests Team Bronson should have lawyers and a forensic ballot auditing team on site, ready to work.
Cured, uncured? Are we talking about ballots or beef jerky? What a crock of ….
Thank you Suzanne for telling it like it is. I recently wrote (after the Editorial Board comments on the election) to Ryan Binkley and told him I stopped reading his Washington Post/Alaska Edition and only ask my neighbors to save their papers so I can clean my windows.
It is obvious that Municipal Clerk Jones needs to fired for incompetence & obstruction of an election process! Where is the Lieutenant Governor in this matter?
This entire fiasco is another example of “it’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.” ……………..
Only could be one reason, it’s no going their way so they need time to cheat. It’s the democrat way!
Only could be one reason, it’s no going their way so they need time to cheat. It’s the democrat way!
And somehow all 1900 votes will be for “Dunbar” with an additional 1k more from the curing and you’ll see Bronson’s vote total drop. It will be what happened during the Georgia Senate Runoff when Perdue lost 30k votes from his tally and Ossoff gained twice that number.
Positively, they would cheat if they thought they could get away with it. Positively!
The Muni Clerk needs to be relieved of her duties and Fired!
Muni Clerk must be an unabashed Left-wing Democrat. They always give themselves away.
Right, just like for Trump. Stop counting the votes on election night.
We have got, to get rid of these radicals, running the city of anchorage and are Lame legislators in Juneau.
Hope they have some watchers that support Bronson observing. Seems Alaska Commie dems are just trying to keep up with the herd mentality.
With shenanigans like this, how can those who vote Democrat be surprised when Conservatives question the integrity of the voting process? The Marxists in Anchorage have complete control of the election process and use that to their advantage. As Joseph Stalin once said…”Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” I will be very surprised if Dave Bronson is ultimately sworn in.
Was anyone really expecting anything different?
Bronson need to start filing suits NOW. Learn from what happened to Trump.
Too bad we don’t take this much care in counting presidential ballots.
This is looking more and more like the Georgia runoffs. Republicans having a slight lead until the very end. Then, a last minute rally and the Democrats win again. I don’t want to be pessimistic but….
What a mess. Keeping Dave Bronson in prayer that he will prevail and be sworn in. The mail in ballot needs to end. The entire process is like a circus.
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