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.
