Sen. Mike Shower introduced an election reform measure aimed, he says, at beefing up election security in Alaska in a nonpartisan fashion, but already it is seen by some as a voter-suppression tool.
The Wasilla Republican’s proposal, Senate Bill 39, could affect municipalities’ ability to automatically send ballots to all registered voters, but it would not hamper them in sending ballots to voters who ask for them. Among other things, the bill also would repeal the 2016 voter-adopted initiative that automatically registers Permanent Fund dividend applicants to vote.
Is Shower’s proposed legislation necessary? Is Alaska’s voter security up to snuff?
As of today, the state Division of Elections shows 599,704 voters registered to go to the polls. That is more people registered to vote than there are voters.
Some of those registered are ineligible to vote or have moved away or died, but remain on the rolls. It takes some time and a complicated federally mandated process to purge the voter rolls, so there appear to be more registered than actually are.
That is a problem that presents ample opportunities for mischief. Shower is onto something in trying to make the system more secure, but it likely will face some tough sledding in the Legislature.
Very tough sledding.
Keep up the good work Senator Shower !!
It would certainly lead to unemployment for numerous legislators, so I doubt it ever sees the light of day. Every vote in person with ID, or notarized if absentee.
The process has been massively corrupt since 2010–anyone who followed the Miller race at all, knows that is the case. Good luck getting the old guard of AK GOP folks to go along with a clean up of the process; they’ve all traded in that corrupt stock for so many years.. that’s how and why many of them are where they are. If 1/10 of the people in this state knew 1/10 of the corruption, Juneau would be on fire. Voters from both parties would be enraged. They would literally burn them out if they had any idea how badly they have been treated and how their “votes” are Manipulated..
I am still waiting for the reason why the SOA used Dominion Voting machines. Why didn’t the SOA follow Texas in rejecting Dominion because they are easily corrupted? Texas did a study and found numerous issues with Dominion rejecting them in 2019 and 2020. Unless Alaska did a similar study that refutes Texas’s findings on Dominion, why would you trust Dominion?
Further where is the outrage from the SOA legislators directed at the Alaska Supreme Court in changing the election law? Such was the lawsuit timing that there was no time before the election to appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Folks all this plus lots more was all planned well in advance of the election.
Nope all the above should be forgotten and we need to move on. Just ask Murkowski.
Outrageous. 599704 in a state with 730000 or so. Yep something wrong with those. May the best cheaters win is what voting devolves into in Alaska and nationwide.
Support him 100%. We either restore voter & voting integrity to a procedure we can completely trust or suffer the results. Trusted elections bind the nation. Distrusted elections tear it apart. You don’t get that trust simply by saying the elections are fine or censoring people or calling people traitors who question their integrity. You keep that trust by ensuring voters are citizens, they are voting where they live & as much as possible, do voting in person at the polls, where you show some kind of ID. And keep all aspects of voting off computers where information is stored invisibly & electronically.
Eliminating the practice of automatically mailing ballots to people don’t live here, or even live at all, or are collecting the PFD from some other state hardly disenfranchises anyone but cheats and cons. Absentee ballots are available to anyone who requests them. And if you can go to the grocery store, you can certainly vote in person. I have never heard of anyone in our state being discouraged from voting in modern times. The only case for continuing the practice of automatically mailing ballots requiring no validation is for the purpose of fraud. There are no party lines to it.
Alaska’s election system is flawed but the state supreme court and the governor don’t seem to care. The idea of every legal vote should count is dead on arrival.
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