Guest blogged by Shannyn Moore
ANCHORAGE – 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 enough to get out and 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.
And as if all of that doesn’t stink enough, we still don’t know who won the Ted Stevens U.S. Senate race, the Don Young U.S. House, or even the race for Mayor of Anchorage and most curiously, why turnout this year was down 11% from 2004, even with Alaska’s own previously-popular Governor on the ticket, and passions for Obama here and everywhere else, extraordinarily high…
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 a Democrat represent us 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 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 for early voting, 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 of Begich by 3,353 votes with 49,000 ballots left to count. While Berkowitz is behind Young 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 Stevens 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 -36! A 25 POINT SPREAD!!! An identical point spread as the 2004 Election.
Alaska: A Diebold Company Town…
Alaska has certainly had our share of election hanky panky. Check out this link to our 2004 election results [PDF]. 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 after turnout totals of more than 200% were noticed in some Alaskan counties. The Democrats won the lawsuit for the release of the data revealing how voters had actually voted in 2004, over Diebold’s objections and the allowance for the company to “manipulate the data” (their words!) before it would be released. The state then actually invoked a “national security” assertion in trying to avoid releasing the data.
In 2006 the Democrats were forced to go to court AGAIN to have the Alaska Division of Elections release the raw election data for the 2006 election.
With 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?
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.
For more, see our good friend Brad Friedman’s coverage concerning Alaska yesterday, and Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com who asks: “What the Hell Happened in Alaska?”
UPDATE 11/7/08: Shannyn Moore has some slightly updated numbers, as Alaska seems to have “found” some ballots, though turnout rates still remain inexplicably way down from the ’04 election. See her update at Huff Po here…
UPDATE 11/10/08: Alaska releases new numbers, with thousands of newly “found” ballots, and the admission that nearly a third of all ballots remain uncounted. Details now here…
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Shannyn Moore is a Native Alaskan and a top rated progressive broadcaster based in Anchorage, Alaska. Shannyn blogs at ShannynMoore.wordpress.com and Huffington Post.
Excellent article – thank you Shannyn Moore.
I smell rotten peach pits in GA. Has anyone found an in-depth article for GA like this one? I’m searching but not finding.
I look at Karen C. Handel, GA SoS in much the same way as Kenneth Blackwell former OH SoS. I want her investigated.
Hell, I lived up there for 15 years and that’s some of the biggest back scratchin I’ve ever seen. And then there’s this:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/11/2008115212259449905.html
So where does the rest of the Arab world stand on this one? Will someone not find this courageous man a home??????
And where the hell does the rest of the family stand?
Brad Friedman!!! What are we to do? What can Alaskans do? Demand to observe the absentee ballot counts?
Thanks for the great work Shannyn!
Hey 99, what happened to the article button on the sidebar?
See what I mean re: GA stinkin’ Peach Pits
AJC – More Georgians voted, but not as many as projected
66.9 percent cast ballots, up from 66.3 percent in 2004
Now, we all know this impossible, right?
What do you mean “article button”?
The button above archives.
Thanks.
Well, the server has been pitching purple polka-dotted hissies for the last couple weeks and it may have been lost in a crash, or Brad is working on it, or it was found to be slowing up the works even more than everything else, or the “Featured Stories” box was deemed to be enough….
In short, I don’t know. I’ll mention it to Brad.
Now, here in Jawja, the election results came very close to the polling percentages, suggesting no major manipulation that might have skewed results. Still, the runoff of Martin and Chambliss will require severe scrutiny and vigilance, especially having a Handel on the machines.
Again thanks 99, BTW DN was outstanding today!
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/6/president_elect_obama_and_the_future
Smells “Moosey” ?
Great work, Shannyn. I’m very glad to see you’ve referenced the anomalous NH Primary election in your excellent article. I was in NH for the disastrous recount, assisting BlackBoxVoting.org in their ground-breaking ballot chain of custody investigation. You might want to look into what we found there, as it seems like the same exact same pattern of fraud you are reporting from Alaska.
We found:
1. The Diebold OP SCAN machines had a failure rate 163 times greater than allowed by H.A.V.A. federal standards
2. More votes than voters (inflated vote totals)
3. More voters than votes, in some cases, directly in proportion/ corresponding to the wards where the machines had mysteriously inflated vote totals
4. The resulting “chain of custody” ballot investigation directly reflected these anomalies/ we saw some VERY unsettling events while tracking.
I spent 2 months putting together the following video to sum up the investigation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYz9O_SvIJI
“NH RECOUNT/ Manchester Ward 5: INFLATED VOTE TOTALS”
All of the sources and info in this video are dead accurate/ thoroughly vetted by BBV and assisting expert statisticians. (Bradbloggers, if you haven’t seen this and other videos BBV produced re the NH Primary Election disaster, please watch the above video. I believe what we saw is critical to understanding the problems in Alaska Shannyn is detailing above. Also sheds some light on just how massive this victory for Obama really is, as some of us believe there was a massive hack attempt to manipulate the primaries/ secure the Dem nomination for Hillary. This might explain why they cemented the odd choice of PALIN as VP –who they would have LOVED to see take on Hillary in the general election. Their old script re: ‘christian base turnout’/ and ‘visceral Hillary haters’ just might’ve worked!)
You might want to give Bev a shout, if you haven’t already, as her data might put you leaps and bounds ahead in your research, give you the timely edge needed. Also, Karen from Illinois, a regular poster here, has all the numbers on file and some VERY intriguing theories on how this was successfully achieved.
Keep up the great work, and please continue to keep us in the loop with what you discover.
(Note to Kira: I think GA is funky, too/ not as shored up on the info as you–but I sure do dig on your posts and links!)
GA numbers are down because of their “poll tax” ID requirements. This was expected. This can only be countered by a national program of assistance to get the lower-income and elderly their ID’s.
Hopefully, Obama will work to get a National Holiday for ELection Day and Paper Ballots For ALL.
I would even be willing to trade a requirement of State ID in exchange for same-day registration (with said ID), knowing we could invest our money in getting those who need them the IDs.
C
Same thing in Florida, record registrations, less voters than ’04
Thanks very much for posting about the irregularities in Alaska. I have just finished reading mudflats.wordpress.com, and the latest subject asks about the big difference in vote numbers reported vs voters registered/turnout. There is also a discrepancy between votes and poll results for the top three races: President, Senate and House of Representatives.
Hey EI folks, send your Obama Christmas to do list here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27562795
Flo!~I think we successfully counter-hacked in Florida, don’t you? I can’t wait to see the numbers re: voters purged/ provisional voters vs. Obama margin of victory. Throw in all the voters turned away or leaving re: massive break down of the DIEBOLD OP SCANS reported in over 10 counties throughout the southwest part of the state–
I think the work done by Election Intergrity folk (yes, that’s YOU fine people) and GRACIOUS THANKS to the due diligence of Dan McCrae and Pam Haengel with the Florida Voters Coalition/ Voters Action tenaciously chip-chip-chipping away at Browning’s unconstitutional “no match no vote” law; eroding it in steady waves, municipality by municipality. I think we really might’ve turned FLORIDA BLUE in spite, de spite, and in light of the manipulation. What say you?…
Hey Jeannie Dean, you and Bev and EVERYBODY over there are ANGELS! Maybe someday I’ll get to THANK YOU sufficiently. 🙂
If it looks like a moose and if it smells like a moose and if it craps like a moose then it must be Alaska, Florida or West Virginia.
Go get ’em Brad!
Crazy stuff.
We need some sort of organization to bombard our congressmen to repeal/amend HAVA. We need to get rid of machines in our election process. Paper ballots with pencil and oversight of counters by both/all parties. Canada does this and they have the results by 11pm. With this new administration, it would be the perfect time to get our election process on the right track without machines.
Is GA SoS Karen Handel a Heartless B*tch?
Fulton, still counting ballots, may have violated law –
Ummm….Thats right sheeple. There is voting fraud in America. The NWO wanted Obama in office.
Diebold is criminal, time and time again these machines have proven very hackable and they flip votes.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
alaskan’s don’t vote because let’s face it the president who is elected is voted into office before alaskan polls are even closed.
#25 Mark, that would be “election fraud”, as Brad would say the “voters” are doing just fine. No voter fraud other than Ann Coulter and maybe Santorum.
Santorum
(I can’t see the preview anymore?)
I realy dont understand what is the all the fuz about it. We all know that all the elctions are fix, come on,it is a no brainer, tell me the last time you saw an honest election and i tell you the last time we see a martian walking on the streets. It is all a rack, and you know it, they know it everyone knnows it. It is like “the goverment is of the people, for the people and to the people, lolololol, Please, spend you time in something we dont know. 2 party goverment system, what do you expect?. Listen you can ask an apple tree to give you peaches, you can pray all you want, to any God you want, but an apple tree AINT going to give you peaches, period. So in a 2 party goverment system dont even ask for honest elections, AINT going to happend.
The road to my voting place in Ketchikan was actually road blocked, “due to construction”, and today its miraculously all clear. This may be a coincidence, but how many “coincidences” are there around the country. All it takes is to discourage one or two percent and the outcome can change. There was a lot of enthusiasm to vote this year, I really can’t believe its a time zone thing. Why this year and not last? People know how important the congressional races are. How could one resist to vote down a felon or who in their right mind would vote for a felon? ,LOKI
Hmmm … interesting analysis.
I like the smell of fish … perhaps even more than fish do.
I am wondering when the last (mostly) honest election was held. My best guess is 1952.
Any election is on a gradation of the honesty / dishonesty dichotomy.
Does anyone here have any ideas on how to have a mostly (99% and up) honest election?
kyle lorden
Having lived a short while in Fairbanks I do not find your data provided far fetched in its suggestion that there was some serious hanky panky which occurred in Alaska because of Sarah Palin supporters. Alaska is a corrupt and entrentched incorrigible retro throwback culture where there should be a federal investigation into the strong possibility that the results of the election were manipulated as a made to order action instigated by Sarah Palin extremists.
I met some very mice people in Alasak but Sarah Palin represents the worst and most ignorant of the rednecks up there in a state that buys off its population with crumbs tossed to them from the oil revenues used to payoff the whole state.
Of course I care!!! I’m very happy Americans turned out in large enough numbers to prevent another stolen presidential election, but this fraud has got to stop. I can’t believe the will of the people means so little to the party (GOP) who claims to have a mandate on patriotism and Christianity. Vote suppression is nothing less than treason. Keep up the good fight and good luck in cleaning up the filth in Alaska and other states. A change is coming…
More about that Diebold stinker in GA:
11/6/08 11:42pm AJC – Ballot-counting marathon stretches in Fulton
Article linked above has more info on the total meltdown caused by the Machines, and SoS Handel’s threat to report the county’s election operation to the state Election Board.
Oh what a tangled web we weave …
[ed note: Comment deleted. Disinformation. –99]
And Barak Obama’s $63 million in illegal foreign campaign contributions smell “rosey?”
What nonsense. Democrats reserve the sacred right
to cheat in elections for themselves. If they suspect that the GOP might be doing it, they are outraged…because they hate competition.
If there was election fraud in Alaska, let us see the faithful Democrat lawyers bring a case to trial. If they do not, it shows that this is just more hysteria.
And why do voting machines only fail when Democrats lose? When they win, those machines work just fine, chads or no chads!
I think all of you need to get a life. Did you ever think Just Maybe Alaska wanted to keep Sarah Palin as their Governor. I think she is a wonderful person and a REAL PERSON. GET OFF HER BACK AND GROW UP.
I could be mistaken, but didn’t McCain concede the election before the polls even closed in Alaska? That’d probably keep me from continuing to stand in line.
Just my opinion, of course, but even with “freedom of the press” I think it is wrong to broadcast ANY election returns until ALL polls are closed in ALL states.
Why are you Americans so jealous? Go out and do something yourself if you don’t like it. Stop complaining and calling people names “rednecks, etc”
This is disgusting! What are you trying to smoke here? You are a moron.
[ed note: This commenter has been banned. –99]
… majordomo said…
“Go to websites like ….”
Ah, the return of press agent for the “open-source” evm… which is just as unverifiable, just as faith-based as a proprietary-source evm.
*sigh*
Is “Rinse” (out mouth, ptooey) linked to this or what?
Wilburrr… I think I’m going to miss Jethro Bodine with a vagina she was enterrrrtaining.
BTW ~ Wil ya think she gets to keep the undies …
… Floridiot said on…
“Is “Rinse” (out mouth, ptooey) linked to this or what?”
In spirit, perchance, but otherwise just seems to be someone who figured out with the rest of us that proprietary software in public voting was and is by itself a disaster for the voter.
Unfortunately they then locked on to the open source concept as the solution to all e-voting problems and… froze in mid-step. Never completed the logical analysis as it evolved and most other folks realized that e-voting itself had insurmountable built-in flaws.
And then this person was persistent enough in his approaches to engage in deceptive ploys here using multiple screen names… and you can guess what happened when he ignored the warnings about that behavior.
Look at the difference between the “red states” and “blue states”. In general, McCain won by huge margins, Obama’s wins were much tighter. There have been problems with the voting machines and optical scanners everywhere, skewing races toward both parties. Election fraud is rampant throughout our country. We need an overhaul, but it’s a local issue. Everyone needs to take some initiative and change things at your local level.
could we all agree to start “operation occupy” . I am not an experienced organizer , but I think If hundreds of thousands of us began to occupy the local offices of their senators and representatives demanding an end to electronic voting and replacing it with handcounted paper ballots we could maybe get them to listen and move on this. With an overwhelming Democratic majority in january and a
democratic president national legislation could be passed …..if we put enough pressure on them.
99: Don’t cha know what an article button is? Sheesh!!! What the hell’s duh matter wit cha???
How about: Obama in 2008 had virtually the same vote count as Bush in 2004 (nationwide)! There were a record # of Democratic registrations in 2008 because of the extended Hillary/Obama primary, too!
Maybe it’s not so much a low 2008 count in both cases, but you’re further proving the stolen 2004 election, too. The count was way too high in 2004.
Are we assuming the 2004 counts were accurate when we’re comparing them? Personally, I think the 2004 AND the 2008 counts aren’t to be trusted. That would mean, we aren’t concerned that there were problems with the 2004 counts.
Wasn’t Alaska the state where they were fighting to suppress vote information in 2004? Or was it 2006?
Does anyone believe that George Bush got 62 million votes in 2004 and Obama got 63 million votes in 2008?
Does anyone believe Kerry got 59 million votes in 2004 and Obama got 63 million in 2008?
Somehow, I just don’t believe those numbers. They’re hard to believe.
How about this one: Bush in 2004 got 62 million, and McCain/Palin got 55 million. So, Bush got 7 million more votes than McCain/Palin??? Somehow, that just doesn’t seem right (to me).
Also, 3-4 million total less votes in the 2008 Obama/McCain race than the 2004 Bush/Kerry race? After a record new amount of registrations? Gee, that’s hard to believe, isn’t it???
I think one could figure out if there was election fraud with the “turn out” facts presented here.
Election boards check off whether or not someone voted. They keep this record in there voter registration books. (they check your name off in someway when they hand you a ballot, so they know not to give you another so you don’t vote twice.)
Check this count. If it matches the number of votes cast then it verifies this voter turn out question. …BUT these records might have been rigged with also, you might say… Well, then a party should randomly audit this record. (have a party contact a significant random sample of voters that were and were not checked to have voted in this election, to survey if they say they did or did not.) – no invasion of privacy and can be easily done.
What do you think?
You are pretty well the only nation in the world that uses these E-lectronic vote manipulators.
Why don’t you get rid of them? There isn’t any need for them and it is a rediculous waste of money.
GET RID OF THEM AND USE PAPER BALLOTS!
What if it more so leads to the conclusion that the 2004 votes were over inflated? I’m just sayin’…
To ME, it seems that the Obama/McCain/Palin was a wildly more popular election than Bush/Kerry, and thre were millions of more votes in the Bush/Kerry election??? No way!
The only “human error” was allowing these electronic vote tabulation devices to be rolled out nationally by the Help America Vote Act of 2002!