By TERRENCE SHANIGAN
This is the first part in a three-part series on Alaska election reform.
Alaska is a place where election issues are the norm, not the exception. As an Alaska Native from Bristol Bay, I am keenly familiar with the many issues that have surfaced over the years.
To list a few: the lack of access to in-person voting; the ability to destroy ballots at the precinct level; the claims that many lack access to voter identification; and irregularities like those seen in the Senate race between Joe Miller and Sen. Lisa Murkowski that re-surfaced during the 2016 House race between challenger Dean Westlake and incumbent Rep. Ben Nageak. We also know that a series of data breaches between 2012 and 2024 compromised the voting data of most Alaskans.
Cumulatively, cybersecurity failures, judicial activism, perceived bureaucratic interference, and apathy by the executive branch all add up to big problems with our elections.
I have never stated or implied that fraud is a part of our election system. However, I have identified areas where we have the potential for significant errors, inaccuracies with ballot counting, and the need for strict accountability. The data security vulnerability should alarm everyone. Every Alaskan has had their HIPPA information compromised in the past few years, and 113,000 Alaskans had every part of their voting identifiers stolen by nefarious actors.
Was your information stolen? You may never know because the Division of Elections keeps this information to itself. Where is the callout from the legislature, the Division of Elections Director, or the Office of the Lieutenant Governor to share this information with the public? Full public disclosure should be our right under the law.
The problems are systemic, and they have been around for decades. As more time passes, they compound without much improvement. The problems we see with our election system are well known, and these dysfunctions are embarrassing and undermine voter confidence.
Three overarching issues have emerged.
- First, apathy by the executive branch for failing to embrace their constitutional obligation.
- Second, judicial interference with the intent to undermine existing statutes and obstruct reform by circumventing the intent of the legislative branch.
- Third, activism at different times by the Division of Elections.
With such a high transient population, many Alaskans need more historical background of our election woes. Others, due to the passage of time, still need to be reminded of the headlines from past election cycles.
One thing remains constant, however, which is that career bureaucrats and the judiciary outlast short-term election cycles.
Elections directors come and go, as do lieutenant governors, but all drink from the same glass. Few come in with the necessary knowledge of these problems, and fewer have the will to make the substantial changes we need, which compounds the problem. We have witnessed bureaucrats protect the status quo, not necessarily based on nefarious intent but rather on protectionism.
For years, legislators from both sides have unsuccessfully attempted to make election reforms. Sen. Mike Shower (R-Wasilla) is a long-time champion of election reform. Rep. Sarah Vance (R-Homer) has, in recent years, collaborated to propose meaningful reform. All too often, good legislation is hijacked by legislators filing amendments such as same-day registration with no voter ID—a deal breaker for 84 percent of Americans, according to a 2020 Monmouth University research poll and a 2024 Gallup poll.
Serious election issues have been an ongoing problem in Alaska since 2010 during the write-in campaign between Joe Miller and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and, more specifically, legal challenges in House District 40. Here is a brief history of the more notable problems:
In 2012, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) breach had a portable hard drive stolen that exposed the personal information of approximately 500 Alaskans.
In 2014, during the hand count of mail-in and questioned ballots for the Bill Walker vs Sean Parnell race for governor, it was discovered that as many as 15 percent of Alaskans were improperly registered, resulting in the in-state legislative portion of their ballot being rejected.
In 2015, the Alaska Department of Administration experienced a cyberattack affecting over 700,000 Alaskans.
In 2016, Democrat primary incumbent Rep. Benjamin Nageak and challenger Dean Westlake experienced legal challenges and judicial interventions similar to Miller vs. Murkowski in 2010 in House District 40.
In 2020, five days before the election, Alaska’s Online Voter Registration System was breached, and nefarious foreign actors stole the personal information of more than 113,000 Alaskans, enabling ballots to be printed online and cast without your knowledge.
In 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Alaska Legislature, before it recessed, took up the question of whether a signature would still be required for mail-in ballots. The Legislature voted to keep the signature requirement and adjourned. Anchorage Superior Court Judge Dani Crosby then ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, the League of Women Voters of Alaska, stating that the witness signature requirement unconstitutionally burdened the right to vote amid the pandemic.
In 2021, another sophisticated cyberattack compromised Alaska’s DHSS system again, exposing all Alaskans’ personal and health information.
In 2024, an Alaska Department of Corrections data exposure of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) exposed protected health information to incarcerated individuals.
This pattern of serious security breaches continues to expose the vulnerabilities of Alaska’s election system. There has been a lack of action, which comes down to willful apathy from politicians and bureaucrats who appear content with turning a blind eye to fixing Alaska’s election issues.
The lieutenant governor should turn over every stone—and now—to answer any questions about the vulnerability of our election system before certifying an election. A dive into the many problems with Alaska’s election system will be explored in the second part of this series. If any Alaskan thinks they know a lot about Alaska’s election issues, just wait until you see what is under the hood.
Terrence Shanigan is a lifelong Alaskan of Sugpiaq descent from Bristol Bay. He is also the co-founder of Mission Critical, is a combat veteran, an honored husband and a dedicated father.
Amen. Thank you for being a voice of reason. The sad truth is that those in office have zero reason to fix this mess because they know that it is the only reason they are in office.
Great information! All Alaska voters need to be concerned about our elections! Looking forward to the next article in the series!
Joe Miller was my choice. I have never voted for that woman, I alway felt she was deceitful. I think I have been proven right many times, she’s not a Republican like her Dad.
Terrence great article. I think a lot of us real. Alaskans are right there with you.
I keep asking about ranked-choice voting being illegal problem, but nobody seems to have the answer.
My question is, isn’t it one person one vote and since you have multiple votes shouldn’t that be illegal?
On top of that with your Democrat Republican, your vote is taken away from you in choice voting and the system votes. The way they want to vote with your vote.
We do need to clean house with all these long-standing politicians and their crooked ways. The information came from us by the politicians on our identity. Theft is not right. Why do they get to know everything in the voter doesn’t know anything? The game is rigged. The politicians are getting rich and lying To the taxpayer. We need a major overhaul.
I can’t believe that the voter is OK with being lied to stole from and allow the politicians who work for us to tell us how it’s gonna be and what they’re gonna do with the money And if we don’t like it too bad, they’re gonna do it anyways. What a screwed up system we have.
Well written. You have an obvious passion for the subject and thank you for speaking up about these issues that too many of us are not fully aware of. It does sound like we need to get things right. Maybe you could run for office? Lieutenant Governor?:)
This is a very well-written article with good research.
Thank you!
One thing that never comes nor goes in Alaska is a structural State of Alaska Secretary of State whose sole job it is is to jab and prod anyone askance of the US Constitution and to reconvene the legislative committees to call to order immediately to order remedy (expressed in US dollars) for usurpations in the night, degrading liberties and illegal group activities occuring in public facilities. This is fixed by calling a statewide assembly to place within the state constitution compliance with the US Constitution a State of Alaska Secretary of State who can call these guys at midnight and make them attend a committee meeting to restore the US Constitution and authorize the nearest magistrate to collect from the offending usurper the going federal price for usurping liberties and rights, a manly $300,000 per instance in the morning at the opening of the bank doors. Only then will you see the Karen’s acting down from their garden party cloister of usurpations of the manly US Constitution in Anchorage Alaska. If the high heel fits why not wear it, Miss Manners.
Thank you, Terrence, for an infotmative, well researched and well written article.
Right on!
The voter registration list should be updated on a regular basis – such as after each governor’s race (?). Those who didn’t vote in that election should be checked to see if they are still residents. If not, purge them.
Go, Terrance, Go! What a Bull’s Eye! Thank you for confirming judicial activism, executive apathy and bureaucratic obstruction as the trifecta of the loss of election confidence. Let us hope someday soon you will have the chance to become Lt. Gov — or higher.
Any vulnerabilities in an election system, no matter how small, should be eliminated.
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It is important to protect the things that are valuable, and elections (or the results of them) are valuable indeed. You lock your doors when you go out, to protect your house and valuables. You do not leave valuable items in view when you park somewhere. You do not wander down dark alleys. Why? Because you are protecting what is valuable to you.
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But, for some reason, elections/voting seems to get the opposite treatment. Which is more secure, mail in voting or in person voting? Which is more secure, showing a photo ID, or just saying your name without any demonstrable proof? Which is more secure, hand counting with a minimum of at least one person observing, or sending the ballots through a machine?
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For some reason, over the last few decades, the US has been moving away from secure elections, to ones that are open to manipulation. And, when someone says this is not an improvement, they are called racist and accused of disenfranchising voters.
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Well, news flash to all. Securing elections may, in extremely rare instances, prevent a person from voting. (However, there are tons of avenues available to get them legally able to vote).
But, every ballot cast illegally IS disenfranchising at least one legal voter. (Perhaps more).
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If you are really interested in stopping voters from becoming “disenfranchised” you need to secure the elections, not open up gaps in the existing security.
Thank you for your very well done and truthful article. Every point you made is right on and the truth. Our election system is a failure but the top job in the system today is a governor that aided and abetted each of these points by not doing his job. The buck stops at his desk and he still ignores the facts. I strongly believe that he adds to the problem and looks the other way. Thank you or taking the time to write this and put it out into our reading system
Unless I missed it, there is no mention of Rank Choice Voting, which many of us find disagreeable.
Wait until I get to RCV in part 2 and Part 3
Superb information , thank you Terrence. Alaska has the dirtiest voter rolls of all the states. We must reform the DOE so we can have trustworthy elections. We certainly do not have that now, and yes APATHY is there in spades. Another problem are the huge amounts of outside dark $ polluting our elections and the outright false advertising during these races from these illicit sources. The No on 2 campaign spent approx. 15 mill to interfere in our elections and lied through their sharp teeth on the mailers they sent. So I say to Gov. Dunleavy, Lt Gov Dahlstrom, and our AG, Treg Taylor-what are you all waiting for? Step up!
In person elections with photo ID would solve all the problems and would be 90% less expensive, with the results available on election day. That is the correction necessary to solve all the problems with the elections.
Same day elections with photo ID works in Canada, France, and Germany. The reason we can’t have one day elections: how would many democrats get elected if they couldn’t cheat!
Thank you for writing this. I worked that 2010 election and like I’ve said many times before, the judge blatantly overstepped when he decided the law did not have to be followed for write-in candidates that year.
There was the time we ran out of ballots and people couldn’t vote.
There was the time the DoE didn’t make it clear to voters of an entire district that the polling place was moved, but somehow, after one court ruling that 2 voters being disenfranchised regarding absentee ballot signatures being required was bad, having many people from one district not be able to find their voting place was not disenfranchisement.
This is unacceptable.
Exactly right on. Our three state branches seem to be against a clean and simple election. My opinion! If we don’t start pushing for election reform, the state will turn into Anchorage. God forbid.
Concern about accurate voting rolls, rolls my eyes but what my eyes want to see is the un-redacted Kelly Report ,what’s in it may answer & solve this articles Tirade. If my White Paper was posted prior to the Election & Candidates & Voters demanded it’s release, we may not be this deep in this mess! Liberty Ed
Can we all agree that Nancy Dahlstrom is not governor material? She can’t even run the light governor’s office. But ……RCV can be defeated simply by voting for one candidate and not ranking any other candidate.
Very well written article and I can’t wait for the rest of it to be posted. I recently wrote about an investigation into the DOE and now hope even more that someone does something … I know I’ll be pushing my Senator (Mike Cronk) to initiate legislature to clean up the Department of Elections once and for all!
Nice work Terrence. Glad to see you bring light to this. DOE did notify those that had their data stolen. Why would someone steal election data security identifier unless they intended to vote for inactive voters? With stolen identifier, they can apply in the name of the voter for an absentee ballot and vote for them. The LT Gov needs to run a representative forensic audit of all inactive voters that suddenly voted absentee to make sure they are who they said they are.
The DOE shared no specifics, waited until after the election to inform us, and not a single DOE employee or elected officials had taken action to correct that wrong. So here we wait for the next breach while our already dirty rolls get dirtier.
Excellent work Terrence. I am looking forward to the additional info in your following submissions.
All should be angry about the state of our elections. There needs to be a stronger push on the legislature to end this boondoggle of RCV. We can’t trust our election system to allow us to vote it out. Enough is enough. One only needs to look at this horrific Mayor and her band of idiots in the Assembly here in Anchorage with their vanity projects and excessive spending to see where the state is headed if we don’t end RCV now.
We need to get out of ERIC as well if that has not already happened. ERIC was pitched to the State as a way to keep voter rolls clean with the basic idea being that we feed ERIC our voter data and they compare it against all of the other voter data from other states in order to identify voters who have moved away from Alaska and have registered in another some other state. That sounds great on paper of course, but unless there is followup to the data ERIC provides and those voters are actually purged the (unintended?) consequences are that whoever as access to the ERIC data now has a customized list of registered Alaska voters who they know will not actually be voting in person – because they no longer live in Alaska and are registered elsewhere.
Anyone armed with that data can take advantage of our weakened ID/signature requirements to to update voter records in order to be able to request and receive absentee ballots that can be used to submit fraudulent votes. That may be a long shot, but unless we follow up and actually purge voters from the rolls using the ERIC data it remains theoretically possible. If we don’t clean up the rolls using the ERIC data, there’s no point in participating and it just becomes another possible security breach and avenue for potential forged votes.
Thank you, Terrence, for shedding light on the dark subject of elections.
Keep shining!
Can we just put this guy in charge of our elections?
Thank you for taking the time to refresh our memory. I have very little confidence in our elections. All ballots should be received on Election Day. That includes Absentee ballots. Plan ahead. Those arriving late are not accepted. All voters should provide state of Alaska ID photo and voter ID. Those without IDs can’t vote. Vote on paper ballots which are hand counted. Look forward to your following segments.
Brilliant work, Terrence! Looking forward to parts two and three.
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The author certainly implies, justifiably, that fraud is an essential part of Alaska’s election system, resolution through Alaska’s equally corrupted state judiciary is not an option, resolution through an indifferent legislature (outnumbered 7 to 1 by registered special interests who like things just the way they are) is not an option, and resolution through an executive branch who simply don’t seem to care is not an option.
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So… our last, best hope looks like President Trump’s brand-new Justice Department.
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Might this be a start?
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The author describes an election system thoroughly corrupted by fraudulent activity which elected and unelected state officials arguably knew about, could have prevented, but knowingly failed and refused to do so in apparent violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1346 which defines “scheme or artifice to defraud” to include “a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”
(‘https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB11025)
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Elected and unelected state officials who knew about, but failed and refused to correct election-system fraud, may have misused their authority in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242 “Deprivation of rights under color of law”.
(‘https://law.justia.com/codes/us/title-18/part-i/chapter-13/sec-242/)
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The author reports a pattern of what might be reasonably interpreted as ongoing mail and wire fraud, violations under RICO law Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organization Act, 18
U.S.C. §§ 1961-1968.
(‘https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/training/primers/2021_Primer_RICO.pdf)
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There’s a website dedicated to “Voter fraud, voter suppression, and other election crimes. If you witness or suspect election crimes, you can report them. Learn where to report voter fraud and voting rights violations.”
(‘https://www.usa.gov/voter-fraud)
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So, what’s likely to get the Trump DOJ’s attention?
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Evidence, arguments, influential sponsors… starting with sufficient evidence of probable cause to justify bringing culpable officials to trial.
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Might take a number of like-minded folks, each with a different piece of the puzzle, to put the whole thing together, make sense of it, figure out what to do with it, get influential sponsors, and decide ahead of time what winning this war looks like.
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What do you think, Terrence?
Terrence Shanigan for Lt Governor!
Mr. Shanigan is also a long time Alaska State Trooper with a keen sense of rural shenanigans.
I hope he and the rest of Alaska continue to press for the changes in voting security that many other states have implemented.
Alaska NEEDS voter reform.
We waste MILLIONS in elections and step over the basic and cheap steps to correct these issues. For instance, Government ID to vote is an easy fix…native villages and corps could EASILY fix this issue. A municipality is a legal government entity. They could easily make this happen for their residents. AZ, NM, OK, ND, SD and Montana all have LARGE native populations that they found ways to include in local elections security.
Nancy D. has sh*t the bed in her role as chief of elections. I see ZERO forward progress from someone who has aspirations of being higher up the elected food chain. If you CANNOT do the job you have been elected for…don’t ask me as a voter to promote you.
Thank you for your informative information. With RCV still in place, how do We The People get this embarrassment fixed. I’m looking for a plan. Thanks
Thank you fine Sir, for shining the light of truth! I as well as many others are fed up! Alaska is slipping away as we are taken over by the enemy of the liberal agenda. We are loosing all the wonderful things Alaskans are accustom to. Like truth, honor and integrity. A mans good word, a hand shake deal no one was a stranger just a friend we hadn’t met. I for one MISS old Alaska.
We need to unite and fight for our Glorious State the One and Only.
There will never be any system put in place that will satisfy the people that are convinced that elections are rigged/fraudulent. That will be Trumps true legacy.
Expecting Dahlstrom to actually get dressed and do some work is a fantasy. She is the most useless salary in the Alaska state government and that is saying a lot.