Anchorage Superior Judge Josie Garton today heard extensive and detailed testimony from an election expert describing how the Division of Elections had moved a key polling location in District 27 at the last minute, to the disadvantage of Rep. Lance Pruitt. Pruitt then lost by 11 votes to Liz Snyder in the East Anchorage district.
Randy Ruedrich, an election volunteer and former chair of the Alaska Republican Party, said the Division’s mistake cost the election between 57-63 votes from people who just could not find the correct voting location, enough to have swayed the election for Pruitt in the precinct that usually votes more Republican.
He compared the difference between day-of vote and early voting and spoke to how they differed from past years. In House District 27’s Precinct 915, there was a “down vote” compared with comparable precincts, demonstrating how the “day-of” vote had been suppressed in that precinct.
The State of Alaska, defending the Division of Elections, first tried to have Ruedrich dismissed as an expert, and then when that didn’t work, tried to say what he was analyzing was simple arithmetic, when he was doing political analysis, not arithmetic.
The surprise last-minute move of the polling location for District 27, Precinct 915 happened twice from the primary to the General Election. Polling started out at the usual place, Wayland Baptist University in the primary, but was moved to Muldoon Town Center after Wayland didn’t want to be a host to the elections because of COVID-19.
Rep. Pruitt contacted the Division of Election on Oct 21 to confirm that the new location would remain at Muldoon Town Center for the General Election. The worker there told him the contracts were in place for Muldoon Town Center, and it was not going to change. Pruitt used that information to print precinct mailers for the General Election, which he mailed out.
It wasn’t until two days before the election that precinct poll workers themselves learned that the voting location was no longer at Muldoon, but had been moved to Begich Middle School.
Election workers testified in court that there was confusion and frustration by voters they spoke to on Election Day, an aspect of testimony that the State’s attorneys had dismissed as hearsay.
One Precinct 915 voter testified about the extent to which she had to go to find the correct place to vote, and how ultimately she didn’t vote because she ran out of time and had to go to an appointment relating to making a living. One of the state lawyers, Tom Flynn, started to shame the witness to make it sound like it was her fault, asking her why she didn’t use alternative methods to vote, and then started talking over her when she said she didn’t trust alternate voting methods. She has lived in the district since the 1980s.
The judge also heard how the Division of Elections had some correct information on its website for polling places in the district, but that Begich Middle School was not listed properly and could only be found if someone clicked through to a deeper link. Muldoon Town Center was the place that was highlighted for voting for that precinct.
It turned out that the Division fo Elections had called the Muldoon Town Center management on Oct. 22, only to be told that the center didn’t like the way things had gone during the primary. The place had been left a mess, and the Division was no longer welcome to hold the election there.
The only other precinct in the district that had a change of polling location was Stuckagain Heights, and those voters, had been notified by the Division of Elections with a postcard.
As for the 3.66 percent undervote in Precinct 915, Ruedrich told the court, “It is a huge impact,” considering the very robust effort by Democrats to get absentee ballots out of their voters during this election, in numbers never seen before in Alaska.
The changing of the in-person voting location, and lack of notification impacted primarily the Republican voters who, like the witness, are less than trusting of the vote-by-mail methods.
Pruitt was represented by election attorney Stacey Stone. The winner of that election, Liz Snyder, will be put on the witness stand on Wednesday, via Zoom. She was not available today, her attorney told the court.
Division of Elections has more of a problem than the article suggests. The dominion voting machines are a part of the voting process in Alaska, with a communication line for faxes attached to the machine. The means that communications to another party exists and is change capable, not secure at all by the contractor that is to monitor the machines. Behavior is only a distraction to the real problem. When one looks in one direction, you can’t see what is gong on in the “real” harmful direction. Get ahold of the Lt. Governor to substantiate this problem.
The Dominion Voting Machines are being used to throw elections. They can easily be manipulated either online or offline by administrators. Alaska must get rid of these machines! I believe this is how Measure 2 passed. The Governor must be inundated with phone calls and e-mails on this.
Merry Christmas Alaska!
They all look like Impossible people to work around. I wouldn’t want to be around them. Why did Alaskans hire people like them!? Alaska is more dumb than them! If it hired better people, we wouldnt face the mess it faces today.
What should we all look like?
District 5 is another example of something wrong with Alaska elections. Adam Wool was losing to his Republican opponent on election day, but won with an avalanche of absentee votes the following week. Dominion voting machines and ballot harvesting are extremely suspect. Ditto for District 4, Grier Hopkin’s district. Wonder if his brother in law, Scott Kendall, was involved with ballot fraud?
Thank you for reporting what will surely be buried. Some people are busy earning a living and moving polling places can be a strategy to eliminate a few votes. It looks like an implemented strategy to me.
2020. The year honest elections and faith in the process died an ugly death.
No reporting on the judicial decision? (Spoiler: Pruitt lost. Again.)
Redo District 27 with a special election. Period.
No more Dominion voting machines in Alaska. What idiot contracted with Dominion in the first place? Fire that person. Take all the Dominion machines to the chop shop and send them to China as scrap metal or plastic.
I was wondering about this too. My bet is Walker contracted them. He was cozying up to China during his Administration.
Agree. Also no more mail in ballots unless you are in the military and stationed over seas
‘ “It is a huge impact,” considering the very robust effort by Democrats to get absentee ballots out of their voter during this election, in numbers never seen before in Alaska.’
I believe there was malfeasance in the entire number of people who supposedly turned out to vote. Since when have we ever had this many people turn out to vote? Like, NEVER!
Voter fraud in Alaskan elections?
Gee-ya think?!?
I hope this works! It depends upon the political persuasion of the court I suppose.
Liberal courts in Alaska
Name of the game all around the nation, ignore voting laws. Particularly in key swing states. Trump is laying it out very accurately now. I think some of it happened in Alaska for sure. Write your congressman and demand congress act. We shall see how this local case goes….
Two cases of voter fraud discovered, both republican. Dead people voting. Keep bashing those voting machines, maybe you too can get a letter from the company.
My, how the tables have turned! Any student of history will recognize these types of electoral shenanigans. They are right out of the Southern playbook for suppressing the Black vote. Looks like the Dems have been reading their history books!
Now we’ll get to see which takes precedence: Oaths to uphold Alaska’s constitution or oaths to The Party.
We need a do-over. In person voting ONLY!
Great comments above and it is heartening to know that there are fellow citizens that have common sense and care about or state and country.
What can we do though? We are up against a mountain, as our own public schools, where most of us attended, and many of us still send our children, are becoming, have become, centers of indoctrination. Most of our universities are worse. Add in the media, and Marxist efforts to undermine our entire nation through all levels of public office. Thus a downward spiral of democracy and our republic has been in full swing for a few decades, and we are not going to undo it quickly or easily.
We do need more organized, very proactive, vehicles to lobby and place pressure at the local, state and federal levels. This is currently, albeit slowly, happening to varying degrees. We need serious upswing of conservative competition in media to counter the left takeover – thank you Must Read. We need to steadily infiltrate higher learning, with educated conservatives that can actually debate and defend truth – hence they must be educated in more than the standard education – think ‘classical’, which is what used to be the norm. We need to train up our children better and the public school should not be doing it for us, as it has now proven disastrous. Values and morals must be instilled, upheld, reinforced. Patriotism needs to be returned to the public square as also God, the author of the morals and values currently being trampled. None of this will be easy, buy it starts with us and it starts in our homes.
Speaking of state election issues.
Should the Presidential election be conducted by a federal election office or some other means -separate from state election offices?
Every other elected seat is state specific, except for the Presidency.
I am sure there are hundreds of years of precedent on why we are where we are. But the Constitution purposefully crafted with the ability to evolve.
Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this?
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