Posted on 03/26/2022 6:26:31 PM PDT by Mount Athos
Alaska’s Division of Elections will not verify the authenticity of voter signatures on the ballots cast in the upcoming June 11 special statewide primary to replace Rep. Don Young.
“There is no statutory authority to verify signatures, but voters will have to provide witness signatures,” a March 25 email from Alaska’s Division of Elections stated.
Since this will be the first time Alaska has ever conducted a statewide mail-in election, concerns have been raised about how the state will ensure that voters are who they claim to be.
Nationally, the most common way of verifying mail-in ballots is to have elections officials verify that a voter’s signature matches the signature on file with the division of elections. In Nevada, for instance, signature verification is performed on every ballot received. If the signature is missing or if the signature on the ballot return envelope does not match the signature on file for the voter, the ballot will not be counted until the voter verifies their signature.
But since Alaska law does not specifically authorize this, there will be no voter signature verification.
Multiple bills have been introduced in the current legislative session to address voter integrity issues, including voter signature verification, but they have languished in various House and Senate committee assignments. Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer submitted legislation to the current Legislature to address this issue, but his Senate Bill 167 has languished in the Senate State Affairs Committee since Jan. 18th with no movement. Several other bills dealing with voter signature verification have been introduced, including House Bill 96 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. That bill has stalled in the House State Affairs Committee.
On April 27, the Division of Elections plans to mail all qualified voters a ballot to the address on file with the division of elections. As of March 1, there were more than 586,000 registered voters on file with the state, but since some addresses are known as “undeliverable” that number will be slightly lower.
Since Alaska has one of the most bloated voter registration rolls in the nation, it is a certainty that thousands of mail-in ballots will be sent to outdated addresses where the voter on file no longer resides.
Alaska’s state’s voter rolls ballooned to 103% of registrations as of 2018 – the highest in the nation by a wide margin. That means there are tens of thousands of registered voters who either no longer live in Alaska or have died. And the predicament isn’t getting any better. In 2020 Alaska’s voter registration skyrocketed to 118%. This mounting problem coincides with a 2016 law which allowed the state to automatically register Alaskans when they apply for a PFD.
This past October two national election experts, Hans A. von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams, traveled to Alaska to warn Gov. Dunleavy and Division of Election staff about the potential risks in Alaska’s election system.
Spakovsky is manager of Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He also served on President Trump’s 11-member Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, this commission worked from May 2017 to January 2018 to review claims of voter fraud, improper registration and voter suppression across the country.
Speaking separately to a groups of lawmakers, media and political activists, Spakovsky called mail-in ballots the “tool of choice” when it comes to vote fraud because they are the easiest ballots to steal and forge.
This presents a problem given that Alaska has no voter signature verification system in place.
Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer was asked during a March 23 press conference why he couldn’t simply conduct an in-person special primary election. He said this was impossible due to a paper “supply chain” shortage and the difficulty in getting the necessary 2,000 election workers required to successfully conduct an in-person election by June 11.
During the upcoming mail-in special primary voters will cast a ballot for the one person they want to serve out the remaining months of Rep. Young’s term. The top four vote getters will then move on to a statewide special general election in which voters will rank the candidates from first to fourth. This will be an in-person (not mail-in) election. If the top candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the first round of tallying, they win. If no candidate takes more than 50% of the vote, then the fourth-place candidate will be eliminated and all the second-place votes on that person’s ballots will be redistributed to the other candidates, accordingly as first place votes. This process continues until one candidate achieves more than 50% of the vote and wins.
then i expect 150% turnout...
That’s not an election.
It’s fraud.
As if faking a witness signature is any harder than faking a voter signature....
Especially when they know it isn’t going to be verified.
God these people are stupid to think we are all stupid enough to accept such an ‘explanation’.
As I understand it, Nevada didn’t do it quite that way in 2020. They scanned the signatures electronically and allowed a 40% error rate at first. When that was rejecting too many ballots, they bumped up the allowable error.
Unless they can confirm EVERY vote, it's a fraud.
Apparently, Putin has already taken back Alaska, who knew?
Long before the advent of computers, ballot stuffing and other forms of voter fraud has existed. There's always been systems to beat the systems, which is why its important to stay ahead of the fraudsters as much as possible.
They’re going to use this to steal Alaska from Republicans and Trump now? We need to ban mail-in ballot elections.
Here’s how to promote less than zero faith in election results.
I think that’s part of their plan ...
You can’t tell me there was MASSIVE percentage of fraud in the old days.
Since the gripes about Bush in 2000 the commies have been adding every method they can to increase the chances they can win and that includes fraud. The computer voting was asking for trouble…and now we’re getting away from that, shockingly.
But it also undermines the principles of election honor in itself. Why should people be able to vote endlessly before an actual DAY? What if they are dead on ACTUAL Election Day? Why should those that died get a say?
Probably. Lots of liberals agendas helped by doing this.
The GOPee candidate will win, even if he doesn’t have a plurality of honest votes. Bank on it.
When this nation began, people had to WALK MILES to get a vote, on a single day.
This lazy pandering BS has to stop. You KNOW when the damn day is, far In Advance, you can arrange to get your lazy butt out at the right time.
Along with that one day meant every person who voted was ALIVE, not dead after they voted 3 months prior.
Generically speaking, you're mostly correct. Early voting has its place as long as identification is provided during the early voting process and there is more than one witness to the validation of the identification.
Not ironically, before my first son was born in 1996 my now ex wife and I voted early because we knew if she didn't give birth by a specific date, the obstetrician had scheduled inducement on ... ELECTION DAY!
Village Clerk asked for ID which we provided and was also confirmed by a second party in the Village Clerks office. We also had to provide the reason we were early voting which happened to be readily apparent!
This bullshit around early voting (and voting early often by the looks of what happened last election) needs to be stopped period. Early voting itself however, does have a legitimate, proper place. The problem is it's been corrupted and it needs to be fixed. Fixed and LIMITED in application.
I think you may be talking about “absentee”. Those could be considered early AND mail-in. Also “provisional” (don’t get me going on that as I was forced to when they didn’t change my polling place when I moved).
I think you may be right! My bad!
Sounds like the commie RATS got this one in the bag. I wonder why they are so afraid to verify VOTER SIGNATURES. Maybe a fraudulent, fake election is needed so the commies can “turn Alaska blue”.
Not true. The Alaska house is split, with too many RINO’s. The rest of them are too cowardly to really do anything conservative.
Fix the law.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.