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March 29, 2024

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No Time for Tuckerman -

Thursday, August 3, 2023

The Quitter Returns! -

Monday, March 21, 2022

Putting the goober in gubernatorial -

Friday, January 28, 2022

Voters File for Hand Recount of Anchorage Municipal Election

OK, everyone! Let’s hear it for the magnificent 10! These Anchorage voters decided to join forces, speak up and say no to this nightmare we call an election that the Election Commission seems to think is just fine. No investigation, they say. No malfeasance they say. No reckless disregard, they say. No reprimands or censures, they say. Move along apathetic public, move along. Yesterday, 10 Anchorage voters filed a recount application with the Municipal Clerk’s Office per Title 28 of the Municipal Code. The provision allows for ten qualified voters to file a recount application with the municipal clerk within…

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Former Anchorage Election Coordinator Calls for Full Hand Count of Paper Ballots

  Well respected former Anchorage Municipal Election Coordinator, Guadalupe Marroquin, recently wrote an open letter to members of the Anchorage Assembly regarding the recent badly botched Municipal election in Anchorage. Her excellent letter (edited for length) also ran in the Anchorage Daily News as a compass piece. Below is the full unedited text of her original letter. She has added her voice to that of former Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller in expressing the seriousness with which we should regard all issues of election integrity. And Ms. Marroquin has stated that in her expert opinion, this election needs a full…

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Mudflats Exclusive: Joe Miller Calls for Unity and Right of Citizens to Hand Count of Municipal Election

Former Alaskan Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller, has issued a statement to The Mudflats regarding the integrity of all elections, including the Alaska Senate race in 2010, and the recently held Anchorage Municipal election on April 3, 2012. The Mudflats strongly supported Joe Miller’s (and Scott McAdams’) right to a full hand count of paper ballots in the 2010 election, and for processes that were fair, laws that were consistent, and the ultimate right of citizens to have confidence in their electoral process. Miller has been a strong proponent of the accessibility of the public to a full…

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Municipal Election Commission Releases Report – Let the Whitewashing Begin!

~The security seal used to secure memory cards into Anchorage’s insecure Diebold AccuVote machines. Today in the Mayor’s conference room in City Hall, the Election Commission released the results of its report and recommendations, including revised numbers that say that 65 of 121 precincts ran out of ballots at some point during the day – a higher total than the 55 previously reported. The commission’s report came after two meetings with voters and poll workers who spoke one-on-one with an individual election commissioner. Mudflats contributor Elstun Lauesen was there today when Commission Chair Gwen Matthew read the entire report aloud….

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The Not-So-Public Election Meeting – (Updated Photo)

~Mayor Dan Sullivan and Deputy Clerk Jacqueline Duke (R) celebrate on St. Patrick’s Day at McGinley’s Bar of which Sullivan is part owner A hastily-called Saturday meeting of the Election Commission was the scene of some interesting and dramatic revelations. Overheard comments that Assembly Chair Hall will be restructuring a vital committee to install Adam Trombley as Chair, and angry voters who were denied the right to speak to the entire body dominated the day – at least for me.  The actual testimony , however, was not able to be heard by the public. Private testimony and “anticipated volume” The…

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Steve Aufrecht’s Interview with Guadalupe Marroquin, Former Anchorage Election Chief

by Linda Kellen Biegel Steve Aufrecht’s blog “What Do I Know” is an often in-depth look at issues dealing with politics, cooking, travel and snippets from everyday life. Yesterday, Steve came up with quite the “get” — he’s the first one who was able to publish an interview with Guadalupe “Lupe” Marroquin, former Deputy Clerk in Charge of Elections for the Municipality. (One of the first things an independent investigator should “investigate” is why the Muni Clerk’s Office never hired a replacement after Lupe left. Instead, the “additional duties” were given to Deputy Clerk Jaqueline Duke, even though there is…

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Assembly Delays Independent Investigation – Election Commission Begins Investigation of Self (UPDATED)

More Questions Than Answers As we march ahead, trying to make sense of the Anchorage Municipal election of April 3, and as more citizens step forward to testify, we find that the questions and concerns have multiplied. Any one of several factors is cause for concern: Polling places running out of ballots, voters being turned away from their polling places, disenfranchisement of unknown numbers of voters, deliberate misinformation from a conservative group to cause chaos at the polls, naive confidence by the Election Commissioner regarding equipment widely known to be problematic, instructions to ignore or replace broken security seals on…

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Baked Alaska: Yet Another Election Crashes and Burns on the Last Frontier

  By Brad Friedman [Read the entire excellent article at BradBlog.com. Extensive excerpts below] …And then there are the election officials of Anchorage, Alaska, where, on April 3rd, there was another disastrous election, held on Diebold op-scan systems, in a state becoming known for its disastrous elections. “Those are amazing machines – utterly amazing,” Anchorage Election Commissioner Gwen Matthews told members of the Anchorage Assembly last Friday night during a working session as they tried to unravel the latest disaster. “It is impossible for them to go haywire,” she misinformed the law makers. “They are highly accurate. I think that I could…

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Is Alaskan Agriculture Ready to Feed Our School Children?

by Linda Kellen Biegel Tim Meyers stands at the front of room 306 at the UAA/APU Consortium Library. He’s the next guest presenter for the session: Sustainable Agriculture in Rural Alaska at the Alaska Botanical Garden’s Spring Conference. The title of the Conference is “Extend the Season, Expand Your Mind” in honor of guest gpeaker, former TV gardener and 40-year organic farming rock star, Eliot Coleman. But if Coleman is a national star, Tim Meyers is the hometown hero. Meyers’ cold-weather farming is being studied by the University of Alaska, who have provided him with interns to train in his…

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Mayor Sullivan’s Appointees Don’t Want to Let the School District Spend Their Own Money

On August 3rd, there was a regular meeting of the Municipality Budget Advisory Commission. (You remember, this is the commission that used to be two — the Budget Advisory Commission and the School Budget Advisory Commission. However, when the word “school” made people think twice about the appointment of one of the Mayor’s LGBT-hating wing-nutter friends, he just combined the commissions.) Anyway, this was the first meeting with two of their newest mayoral appointees: — The most-recently-appointed Amy Demboski, who has worked most of her career in dental offices, was appointed by Sean Parnell to The Commission on Judicial Conduct,…

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