Stolen Election from Alaska?

UPDATE: Alaska On eBay? Election Numbers Update

Original post:

Something stinks. Not just an ordinary low tide smell. Not like something you'd blame on the dog. It smells like an infection. For me to plug my nose, I'd have to overlook some curious facts.

In Alaska, more people voted for George W. Bush in 2004 than for Sarah Palin on Tuesday despite an identical 61-36 margin of victory. Yes. Only four years ago 54,304 Alaskans got off their sofas and voted for Bush, but decided to sit home and not vote for Palin in 2008. In turn, I have to ignore the 30,520 Alaskans who felt progressive enough in 2004 to vote for John Kerry, but weren't inspired to vote for Barack Obama. I would have to glance past the 1,700% increase in the Democratic caucus in February, the 20,991 newly registered voters, and the three largest political rallies in Alaska's history. I would also have to forget the people I stood in a long line with to early vote. It would be helpful not to know every other presidential election since Alaska began keeping records has had a larger turn out than the one we just had with our own Governor on the ticket. Try not to remember 12.4% more Alaskans showed up for the August primary as compared to four years ago, before the Palin nomination. Don't think about the Lower 49's record voter turn out this year either. Try to delete the memory file, though difficult, that 80% of us approved of Sarah Palin just two months ago.

Something stinks. You don't care? Obama won. Yes. He. Did! Free at Last! Wait. Democracy demands all of the votes be counted...if you can find them.

In the balance hangs the fate of Alaska's Senate and House seats. We still don't know if we have elected the now convicted felon Ted Stevens, or Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. We still don't know if Don Young and his million dollar legal problems will defeat former State Representative Ethan Berkowitz and his dreams of Washington DC. Alaska hasn't had Democrat representation in Congress since Mike Gravel lost his senate seat in 1980.

Four years ago, 313,592 out of 474,740 registered voters in Alaska participated in the election-a 66% turnout. Taking into account 49,000 outstanding ballots, on Tuesday 272,633 out of 495,731 registered Alaskans showed up at the polls; a turnout of 54.9%. That's a decrease of more than 11% in voter turnout even though passions ran high for and against Barack Obama, as well as for and against Sarah Palin! This year, early voters set a new record. As of last Thursday, with 4 days left to vote early, 15,000 Alaskans showed up-shattering the old record set in 2004 by 28%! Consider the most popular governor in history-and now the most polarizing-was on the Republican ticket. Consider the historic nature of this race; the first African American presidential candidate EVER! The second woman to ever make a presidential ticket; and she's one of our own. Despite that, we're supposed to believe that overall participation DECREASED by 11%. Not only that, but this historic election both nationally and for Alaska HAD THE LOWEST ALASKA TURNOUT FOR A PRESIDENTIAL RACE EVER!!! That makes sense. REALLY??? Something stinks.

But wait, there's more...

Pre election polls had both Mark Begich-D and Ethan Berkowitz-D solidly beating incumbents Senator Ted Stevens and Congressman Don Young by at least 6-10 points. Stevens is currently ahead by 3,353 votes with 49,000 ballots left to count. Berkowitz, however, is behind by 16,887 votes; a 51-43 margin.

Are we to believe Don Young came from an 8 point average polling deficit to win by 8 points-a whopping 16 point turnaround??? Remember how historic the pundits thought Hillary Clinton's come from behind New Hampshire Primary victory was? She trailed Barack Obama by 9% in the pre primary polls and ended up winning by 2 points. It was called the most "stunning comeback in political history." On Election Night, Don Young topped Hillary Clinton's startling and unprecedented comeback.

Furthermore, there were nearly three thousand Alaskans, (2,783) that voted yet left the hotly contested congressional race blank. In the highly publicized senate race, complete with a nationally covered trial that ended with seven felony convictions for the incumbent, 1,392 Alaskans submitted a ballot and failed to register a vote in the senate race. I'm not sure statistically what that means, but it strikes me as odd that well over a thousand Alaskans would wait in long lines and not cast a vote in either the senate race or the congressional race-especially since there was only one ballot measure. In addition, this particular election had an extra high degree of local interest with Governor Palin on the national stage.

McCain-Palin was ahead in Alaska pre election polling by as much as 55-40. The Haysresearch Poll that came out Sunday indicated that gap had closed to 2.7 points! That poll was certainly consistent with Palin's reverse meteoric fall in popularity within the state of Alaska. In that same Haysresearch Poll released on November 2, Question 2 addressed Governor Palin's positive-negative rating. 11% of Alaskans surveyed said their opinion of Palin had become more positive while 37% indicated they were more negative towards Palin. Yesterday's vote contradicts those polls. McCain-Palin won Alaska 61-36! A 25 POINT SPREAD!!! An identical point spread as the 2004 Election.

Alaska has certainly had our share of election hanky panky. Check out this link to our 2004 election results. There are 40 districts in Alaska. The Anchorage area districts run from District 17-District 32. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and pick any district from 17-32. Pay particular attention to the 3rd column labeled % turnout. Hit the back arrow and select another district. There are more precincts with voter turnout over 100% than under 100%. In other words, many more people voted in Anchorage area precincts than there were registered voters. Clearly, this is not possible.

In 2006, the Democrats filed a lawsuit against the Alaska Division of Elections to release public records needed to verify the 2004 election results. The Democrats also sought to have the Alaska Division of Elections release the raw data for the 2006 election. The State requested several deadline extensions and eventually refused to release the "central tabulator data file" taken from the Diebold-supplied computer used to run the "GEMS" (Global Election Management Software) application. A lawsuit was filed in Superior Court seeking release of the records. The Court eventually forced the State to release the 2004 database. The software was found to contain hundreds of edits after the 2004 election, including as late as July of 2006, prior to the release of the data.

With all that history, and the bizarre anomalies in polling and voting and reports from the field of ballots not being scanned on-site due to broken machines, could this election have been stolen?

The world is watching Alaska's US Senate race. When President-Elect Barack Obama is sworn in on January 20, he will be greeted by a Senate with at least 57 Democrats-three shy of a filibuster-proof majority. And, there are still three hotly contested US Senate races that are too close to call; Georgia, Minnesota and Alaska. Just when we thought we were out of the national spotlight...

I've always said if Democracy was a religion, voting would be the sacrament. I'm wondering if someone stole the body and blood of this election. I'm wondering if the wine isn't poisoned. Take a few whiffs. Breathe deeply. See if you don't come to the same conclusion. Where are the votes? Something stinks at the Alaska Division of Elections.

UPDATE: Alaska On eBay? Election Numbers Update

SEE UPDATED ELECTION INFORMATION STORY

Comments

[clamperken]

uh,oh Sarah. Sounds like your cronies have been busy as beavers while you were running off on your little pipedream. You know what they say: When the cats away the mice (rats) will play. Sounds like, " You got some serious splainin' to do Lucy ", as Ricky would say. Bet ya wish you would never have left your safe little hideout, (er' big), hideout. It must have been nice without all those pesky national reporters looking into your closet doors before you made the idiotic decision to play with the big boys. You got a whole lot to do to wrangle out of this little problem. So get to doin' it ! IT'S GO-GO NOT CRY-CRY !!!!!!

[UKlondongal]

Check out Nate Silver's latest comments on this race here:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/alaska

He extrapolates even a more modest %age of uncounted votes going the same way as those counted to date indicates a definite win for Begich.

[ThePublicRecord]

http://www.pubrecord.org/politics/476-more-than-80000-ballots-in-stevens-begich-senate-race-still-uncounted.html

Alaska"s hotly contested senate race is still up for grabs, as the number of uncounted ballots since Tuesday"s election have now doubled, state election officials said.

Alaska election officials said Friday that more than 81,000 ballots remain uncounted in the contest between Republican incumbent Ted Stevens and Democratic challenger Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage. As of Wednesday, state election officials said Stevens was leading Begich by 3,257 votes.

But the integrity of more than 18,000 ballots have been called into question by Stevens and Begich both of who are now seeking tens of thousands of dollars in donations from their supporters to pay for lawyers during a review process.

[quest44]

It surprised me that after the 2000 election was so obviously stolen that the Democratic party didn't push hard to fix the problems that made it so easy for Republican's to fix the election. I would seriously hope that voter reform is #1 on Obama's agenda especially after he saw how the Republican's were trying to surpress voters rights to register to vote and also in the states with those touch screen voting machines that were reported to be flipping votes from Obama to McCain.Now Obama was lucky because his campign was run so well that they were able to overwhelm the republican's attempts to steal this election ,but future candidates might not be so lucky ! Something needs to be done now before we are faced with another stolen election in our future.

[guajiro]

If all of us in all the states join together via some web-site and push to have a referendum vote to add an amendment to the Constitution giving the U.S. citizen the Federal right to a vote, that would solve the problem. J.Jackson Jr. has a very good book out on this subject.

"Voting in the United States is based on the constitutional principle of states' rights. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the State, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Since the word "vote" appears in the Constitution only with respect to non-discrimination, the so-called right to vote is a "state right." Only a constitutional amendment would give every American an individual affirmative citizenship right to vote."
http://www.house.gov/jackson/VotingAmendment.htm
The following link is a bill in Congress that attempts to get the American people the RIGHT to vote. Email your congressman and let them know to support similar bills.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060206/jackson

[LightningJoe]

Some of the conservative bias in the Anchorage area is, IMHO, a result of trying to maintain a large, modern (read: somewhat lazy and entitled) population center, in a region of the country far better suited to subsistence and rugged individualism.

One indication of this is the large criminal component, to the Anchorage area population; but the sentiment toward entitlement is broader than that. Fishing, trapping, hunting, mining, and tourism are the only industries that enjoy a legitimate base in the area, and there is not nearly enough of those to really support the population's needs -- or to have (over-) developed the area and its tour industry.

The gap is filled by oil money from the north, and by government handouts -- welfare jobs -- brought to the area by our stalwart band of veteran porkers. Without pork, Our state would have far fewer roads, utilities, well-funded schools, or Alaskan Airlines flights; much less the Marine Highway system that Sarah hates so much. The same is true, but perhaps less so, for SouthEast AK, where I live.

No wonder the Republicans who run our polls are panicked, in a year like this. That's no excuse for "adjusting" democracy, of course -- but remember, these are the very folks who regularly remind us (falsely) that "America is not a democracy" -- as if a representative republic were not a form of democracy. As if Abraham Lincoln, the most famous Republican president after Saint Reagan, were wrong about government "by the

[aweissnet]

Palin was fine with Stevens getting re-elected. She said "the people spoke." Well, of course, for a number of reasons, some more obvious than others. Hoping for that senate seat might be one. Not tolerating, but condoning, government corruption, is a fairly frequent activity for Governor Palin, aka Maverick. Why would she care that he pulled a few strings, pocketed some money, took money from Alaskan taxpayers, illegally?

She could call up the National Guard for security measure (haha), and demand a new election. I mean, she's innovative, she's for the people, she's a maverick. She can do anything she wants. It's her state. She runs a lot up there. So we've been told, anyway.

But she doesn't care. I think what the lower 48 has come to see is that govenrment officials up in Alaska have a tendency towards corruption (self-righteously so), lie pathologically, and feel immune from law that politicians down here at least, somewhat follow (or thus try to hide illicit/illegal activities).

People's heads should be rolling. I thing this needs to be nipped in the bud before it bites us in the ass in 2012.

[HoraceOvidson]

A team of investigative reporters is going to have to descend upon Alaska and do a number on the state. When I say team, I would think maybe 50 to a 100 could do a job. No stone should be left unturned. All the corruption should be exposed. I know its snowy and cold, but we must stop the nefarious activities Alaska has fostered before it infects our national politics even more. Lots of reporters are being laid off, or being given buyouts. Time to get your butts up to Alaska now. Take no prisoners.

[alteregoess]

It's really ironic. My "liberal" state does not allow convicted felons to vote, let along run for office and serve if elected. Alaska is "conservative" and doesn't mind if law-breakers represent it in government. You'd think it would be the other way around.

[guajiro]

That really is true what you say. We're supposed to believe we live in a democratic country yet a felon record stops us from voting. I would have thought that serving prison time is the penalty for the crime SEPARATE from the ability to vote. AND YET, felons, like Stevens, can run and serve as politicians. This is but one of many laws built into the system (corporate law being another) that mandates/legalizes distinct class priveliges, the "lower" class losing out of course.

[QoheletParadox]

Consider contacting folks at Alaska's Division of Elections (DOE http://www.elections.alaska.gov/offices.php#dir) to remind them of whistle blower laws, that we are watching, etc. and your Senators to demand that if evidence of voter fraud that favors Stevens and Young exists and Alaska's DOE still says they 'won' the election, that the Senate not recognize them as having won and instead recognize their opponents. The Senate is supposed to be composed of Senators elected by the people. If voter fraud has occurred, the Senate should not allow the seat to be stolen and should assure that the person duly elected in this past election does get seated. Frank L. Smith (see "Political Corruption in America" by M. Grossman) was not allowed to take a seat in 1926 because the Senate adopted a resolution to that effect, one that also declared the seat open (so did not technically expel him).

Hence, perhaps prior to the next term, the Senate (and House) could adopt a resolution to the effect that if voting irregularities exist in a race, that neither candidate would be allowed to take a seat until matters were settled. Instead of declaring the seat open, however, they could declare that if voting fraud favored the party named as the 'winner,' that person would not be allowed to be sworn in and that the 'runner up' would be instead. This would better carry out justice than holding a new election would.

[rharris513]

Of course Alaska is rigged. The plan is for Stevens to win so Palin can take his place in the Senate and run on 2012. Isn't it obvious?

[gobig]

Great piece except for the paragraph about the election results for 2004 in Anchorage. The election website explains these numbers.

"In House Districts 16 " 32 some precincts show more than 100 percent voter turnout. This is because the State of Alaska conducted a special election for the Municipality of Anchorage concurrently with the 2004 General Election. In these districts, there were two ballots, a State ballot and a Municipality ballot. The % Turnout is based on the Cards Cast number. Because each voter could have cast two ballots the turnout in these districts is inflated. In these districts look at the Times Counted number for the US Presidential race to determine the actual number of State ballots cast in each precinct. This number, divided by the number of registered voters will yield the turnout for the precinct:"

[AKDeborah]

You can look at the "Times Counted" number all you want and you still will not get an accurate district number for the 2004 election. This is because the Division of Elections counted, on the district-by-district spreadsheets, ALL the 'early' voters in a region in EACH of the districts in that region. Thus if you look at any district in Region I (which includes HD1 -5 and 33 - 36) every one of those districts shows 1819 early voters. They somehow corrected for this on the statewide totals, but you CANNOT make any sense out of the spreadsheet for an individual district. I spent about 15 hours trying until I figured this out.

[karinova]

OMG, I feel cold all over.
This is not okay.
I don't care WHAT the results are-- go ahead and re-elect Stevens for all I care-- but the votes. Need. To be counted.

[checksixb17]

Alaska is a place where people go to hide out. They don't consider themselves part of the United States and would just as soon break away. They don't hold elections, they steal elections. Why do you think those poor people vote Republican against their own self interest. They are also the most socialist state in the Union when they take money from the rich oil companies and share it with their citizens.

[AlaskaMade]

Whereas I respect your right to your opinion of those of us who call Alaska our home, I do take exception to your statement that Alaskans "are also the most socialist state in the Union when they take money from the rich oil companies and share it with their citizens".

Do you really know anything about my state? What do you know about ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act)? Look at a map of the ownership of the State of Alaska. Read our State Constitution. After the discovery of oil on the Kenai Peninsula and later in Prudhoe Bay our state, under the leadership of Governor Jay Hammond established what is referred to as the Permenant Fund. This Funds represents the fact that the natural resources of the State of Alaska belong to the residents of the State. Through prudent management of oil revenues depostited into this fund over many years, this fund has earned significant returns and those returns are distributed to the residents of the State of Alaska. We do not take money from the oil companies any more than other countries throughout the world. Our state and our leadership had the foresight to realize that these resources were non-renewable and therefore would not last forever, thus the Permanent Fund was born.

Alaska has a diverse population. We have a large hispanic, Samoan, Phillipino, Japanese segment in our population. Not to mention the Aleut, Eskimo, Tlingit-Haida, Inupiak populations who play a large part in our state.

[ched]

With all due respect, yours IS the most socialist state in the union, in addition to being the largest net TAKER of US tax dollars (republicans would call it "welfare"). On top of all that, it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is a corrup cesspool (last governor, Stevens, Young all indicted).
As you said yourself, "We do not take money from the oil companies any more than other countries throughout the world." So now you are comparing your state (NOT country-unless you are a secessionist, too) favorably to Saudi Arabia?
Face it, you live in armpit. Now what are you going to do about it?

[Auntarctica]

Another view from Alaska: I am not surprised in the least. % returns over 100% (ex: 110%)! Editing of the Diebold machines for 2 years! This is the state where critical decisions are made in bars and shady hotel rooms and between key figures in the oil industry and our state and national representatives. Where the mineral management service, much like in Denver, beds down with the oil industry - there have been outright marriages between MMS scientists and key Shell Oil employees. Conflict of interest anyone?

No the stealing of this election was expected. And it is why the Democrats here in Alaska should have lawyers personally watching over the Diebold machines and all the calculations of the returns until the legal process is finished. In other words, we should prepare to sue just like in 2006, as we can already guess what the results will be.

Where are the lawyers with the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee? Alaska gave - thank you Palin - at least in part some of the election results to Obama, we deserve national help in fixing the legal problems with our elections.

[westcoastsc]

Republicans will never have credibility again unless they address these problems by heading the investigations, cleaning out their closets, admitting to all they have done, and helping to prosecute those responsible. We need election reform so that the results can be easily verifiable and a strengthening of the laws against this type of fraud. Are people going to be prosecuted? Thank you Shannyn Moore for laying it all out. One of the things that has disturbed me most by most liberals was their lack of militancy and letting others get away with crimes. If the shoe were on the other foot, they would lock us up and throw away the key or worse.

[lizr]

YES- thanks for the post.

Alaska- the new FL/OHIO?

there are some confusing numbers in the Franken /Coleman race as well, and the Georgia Chambliss race too!

I hope that ELECTORAL REFORM is up there in the top 10 list of Obama Electoral Priorities, including abolishing the electoral college and standardizing/federalizing the elections. We can't leave something so im[portant up to local yahoos who care diddly about democracy, apparently..

[JessWonderin]

As evidenced by Palin's packing political cronies into offices which they are woefully qualified for, what makes one think that her "Elections Oversight" selections would be any better????

Seems we have a system in the Great White North that makes Chi Town look tame - a Rovian nightmare . . . .