The best of Art Chance: Ranked-choice, mail-in, and the election system that’s long been ripe for fraud

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By ART CHANCE

My earliest memories of things political in Alaska were the controversies surrounding Jay Hammond’s defeat of the legendary Bill Egan for governor in 1974, followed four years later by Hammond’s primary defeat of Wally Hickel. Both those elections were rife with error and fraud. 

The Alaska Supreme Court said in plain language that the 1978 Hammond-Hickel primary was tainted by malconduct to the extent that the true outcome was in doubt, but it refused to upset the election result.  There was fraud in Knowles’ 1998 victory over Robin Taylor but again, the court refused to upset the election result.

Back in the day, Alaska had four time zones and was, in Southeast Alaska, four time zones from the East Coast. On election night, once the votes came in from Southeast and the Railbelt, you knew how many votes you needed so you got on the phone to rural Alaska where you had two more time zones and two more hours to find votes; let the bidding begin.   

Those were the days when the “Bush Caucus” had enormous power in Alaska politics. I’ll never really understand why Gov. Bill Sheffield collapsed Alaska into one time zone (with a few small exceptions) because it took away one of the greatest power sources the Democrats had: the Bush Vote.   

Since the free gas incentives in the first Knowles election, fraud hasn’t been much of an issue in Statewide elections, which isn’t to say there wasn’t any, but it wasn’t determinative. There have been more than mere suspicion in many House, Senate, and local elections, but those don’t get much attention.

Alaska’s voting system has always been ripe for fraud. The registration system was far too loose, it was too easy to cast an absentee or challenged ballot, and supervision of the vote count was somewhere between scant and non-existent in much of the State. They were “finding” bags of ballots in the trunk of Trooper cars weeks after the elections in the Hammond-Egan and Hammond-Hickel elections. Somehow we became complacent in the Murkowski-Palin-Parnell-Walker years because the elections weren’t that close.

Then the good-government types did the stupidest thing in Alaska history; they came up with the Permanent Fund dividend automatic registration, as if motor-voter wasn’t fraud bait enough. Everybody and his dog can and does apply for a PFD. The Permanent Fund Division of the Department of Revenue has virtually no verification or fraud detection capability. It relies on PFD fraudsters doing something stupid and getting ratted out by their jealous neighbors. The State makes a lot of smoke and noise busting a few of them every so often and uses that as its fraud deterrent. Only God knows how many registered voter don’t live here or who don’t exist.

Fast forward to the Scamdemic. The communists, excuse me, Democrats used the Scamdemic as their justification to assault Alaska’s already sketchy election laws. There were plenty of leftist judges who were ever-so happy to go along. The judges removed the second signature verification from absentee ballots. They sent out unrequested absentee ballot applications to thousands of “registered” voters who might or might not exist. 

We already had an extended early voting period, so the Democrats could use George Soros or SEIU money to bring punks with iPads north to work the neighborhoods and harvest votes or, some think, harvest ballot applications from mailboxes. I don’t know how much the unions and other leftist groups were using their resources to produce fraudulent ballots, but they certainly had the capability. Give them a list of registered voters that you know no longer live in the district or even in the State, and they’ll give you however many votes you want.

If you were trying to design a voting scheme that was easy to defraud, look no further than Anchorage’s all mail ballot system. Anchorage uses the State of Alaska’s filthy voter rolls. Practically everybody who has come to Alaska seeking a summer job or fleeing an arrest warrant and who applied for unemployment and food stamps is a registered voter, even if they didn’t get the job and went back to Podunk in a month. Practically every military guy who got ordered here applied for a PFD when eligible and even though it has been 10 years and he/she has no intention of ever returning, s/he’s a registered voter in Alaska and a PFD recipient. 

Anchorage has a lengthy “early voting” period and provides anyone who asks a list of who has and hasn’t voted so far. That is simply a vote harvesting scheme. If you are a union, you have a very accurate contact list of all your members, in most cases provided to you by a public employer at public expense. You check the list of who has and hasn’t voted, and you send somebody to go jack up the ones that haven’t.  

The leftist special interest groups are almost as effective but they have to do their own work to keep their contact lists up to date. The unions and the leftist front groups WILL get out their vote. I’ve always suspected that a lot of those people don’t know they voted, but we’ve never had a government that was courageous or honest enough to check.

In Anchorage, the Left buys votes at wholesale; conservatives/Republicans have to get their vote at retail. The Democrats/leftists/union get most of their votes in neatly organized blocks of union members and interest group members. They are easy to identify and turn out, and particularly with the union members there is an implicit threat if they don’t turn out and vote “right.” 

The Left can organize their vote without ever running a single mass media advertisement; email and social media will contact every one of their constituents, and only their constituents.   

The Right has to try to contact their constituencies through a hopelessly fragmented media market and with shoe leather and phone calls, and since the State’s rolls don’t have accurate or up-to-date addresses or contact numbers, a conservative candidate has to spend a lot of money for somewhat more accurate lists, or just trudge down the streets of the districts hoping to find somebody who hasn’t already voted for the leftist. 

Even the shoe leather is somewhat subsidized by the public treasury to turn out the Left’s vote. Most unions have some sort of paid release from work for “union business.”   Union members can be released from duty with pay to handbill, put up signs, or engage in get-out-the-vote activities for union endorsed candidates at the public expense. I have personal knowledge of union/Democrat get-out-the-vote phone banks set up in State of Alaska conference rooms. I have personal knowledge of union members being sent out to put up signs for union backed candidates on “work” time. 

The elections are rigged.

And, no, the exception isn’t proof; Mayor Bronson’s election was a fluke.   Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ implosion and the growing revulsion to the leftist Assembly’s Scamdemic fascism made his election possible, but that election gave him nothing with which to govern; he has one and a half votes on the Assembly, an Assembly which is dedicated to the proposition of not letting him govern.   

So long as we have the current mail ballot electoral system, the Municipal government will only serve public employees and parasites; the rest of us just get to pay for it all. The School Board is no better — the taxpayers and parents have one vote on the board, Dave Donley; the teachers’ union has the rest.

Lots of Republicans are pounding their chests about an impending “Red Tsunami” because of the Democrats’ weak showing in the polls these days.   

It is an illusion; they don’t have to win the vote, they just have to win the count.

Art Chance was a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and then living in Anchorage. He was the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon. This column first ran in February of 2022 and is rerun in his memory. Art Chance died on Oct. 17, 2023.

14 COMMENTS

  1. I sure miss my old friend. In honor of Art, I’ll be holding “Yes on 2” signs all week long in Anchorage. Please join me.

  2. Depressing, Art, but absolutely true. Cleaning up the voter rolls would be a good start, but unfortunately, Alaska still uses the corrupt ERIC system to maintain voter rolls. A move to paper ballots statewide and hand counts would also help greatly. The machines (and yes, even the counting machines, or “tabulators”) were designed and put in place specifically for the purpose of cheating. The democrats always fight viciously against making these changes. I think most people know why.

  3. R.I.P. my friend. May your influence never wain.
    Thank you Suzanne, for bringing this column back to life and light – it is SO timely, truthful, and immediately important.

  4. To say that this piece, like all the rest of Art’s library, is a jewel is less than fair.

    Oh GOD how I miss Art to direct us through the volume of lies, corruption, and general mayhem. How I miss the manipulation by Jess Carr of Local 959 votes and knee busting – “get out the vote days.” How the boys sitting at the Latchstring Bar in The Baranoff Hotel in Juneau ran Alaska after hours, the Working GIRLS on Fourth Ave & Spenard in Anchorage doing business as usual after 4:00Pm and The Wales Tail Saloon had the most expensive hookers in town coupled with an afterhours gig with Jose Felicano sitting at the mic for an hour and then he stood up said “goodnight folks, I am going to bed ” and he did cause it was 2:15 A.M. Gone are the days of buying a couple of drinks for Don Young at the bar spreading his decades worth wisdom.
    ART CHANCE was the master manipulator/exposer of real Alaska. He wrote the real history of our State scraping away the political layers of crap. He cut to the chase every time with wit and gold platted wisdom. I can just hear Art dissect both the combatants for President 2024 -special emphasis on Kama-Lie.
    OH ART –WHERE ARE YOU??

  5. Yes yes yes, vote yes on 2! Don’t be conned again, it’s the right thing to do. Big dark money $$$ Ads are meant to confuse you, to abuse you. Vote yes, yes, yes, vote yes on 2. Get rid of Ranked Choice voting. Vote Yes on 2.

  6. After40 years in Alaska, I do not recall any instances of voter fraud, or manipulation of elections in Alaska. A lot of wasted ink

    • You are selective, Frank, clearly determined to not remember things that are unpleasant. Google for yourself Shungnak and Buckland in 2016.

      Dean Westlake — that was your guy, right? The one who really got into trouble — won by 50 votes when the clerk allowed people to vote two ballots. The court said that mistakes happen.

      In Buckland, they had an absolutely unheard of number of special needs ballots — more than all of the Mat-Su.

      These are just a few. There are so many more. Rural Alaska has no valid checks or balances on elections.

    • Oh, wow, Frank. You do not recall any instances.
      OK, that is proof enough for me. Frank says it did not happen.
      .
      Tell me Frank, do you personally know of anyone who was murdered? Or had their car stolen? Or was assaulted? No?
      I guess those crimes do not happen either.
      .
      Vote/election fraud happens. But, when the powers that be refuse to investigate, there will never be any proof.

  7. I recently watched what was billed as an investigative reporting piece from Alaska’s News Source. Surprised that no other outlets have repeated the story. Apparently, AST descended on Whittier in force recently to interview the substantial Samoan community residing at Begich Towers. They explained that people born in American Samoa are U.S. nationals, not U.S. citizens. As such, these people shouldn’t be registered to vote or voting, yet they have. Towards the end of the story, they said that suspicions were first raised several years ago when one member of the community was elected to local office despite not being a U.S. citizen.

    My question: why does the state appear to act as if it has no responsibility for non-citizens being on the voter rolls? From what I’m seeing, people are just being added regardless. Malicious misrepresentation when it comes to the question of citizenship is one thing, and I’m sure existing laws address it quite well.

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