In what may be seen as an act of transparency or sheer cluelessness, election workers unloaded 50 boxes of blank ballots at the Anchorage Election Office on Friday, and stacked the boxes in one of the spacious rooms. In broad daylight, while counting is underway in the mayor’s runoff election.
Bronson for Mayor campaign workers were on site, and approached the operation to document it. The campaign may file a challenge over the action, since there are now thousands of blank ballots in the same building where ballots are being counted. The room the ballots are in has a push-button code, but it’s unknown how many municipal workers have the code.
The boxes of blank ballots are said to be leftover from the in-person voting centers in Anchorage. These ballots were available to people who did not wish to participate in the mail-in election, but wanted to vote in person on May 11. It’s unknown how many ballots are in these boxes.
Election observers were not notified that the blank ballots were arriving, but the Bronson Campaign has a robust monitoring crew on site.
The Anchorage mayoral election ended on May 11, and counting of ballots continues on Friday. As of Thursday evening, 80,993 ballots had been counted. The election is scheduled to be certified by the Assembly May 25, and the new mayor will be sworn in on July 1.
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