You don't need to read this. I just need to get it out of my system.
[UPDATE Monday, Dec 16, 2024: We each got a $75 discount code for for future flights. This is fine with us since Alaska is our basic airline.]
We had tickets (from Anchorage) to Seattle for 10:35am getting to Seattle at 3:11pm (You lose an hour going Anchorage to Seattle)
Then an LA leaving at 4:56pm arriving in LA at 7:45pm
The first delay notice was to 11am departure.
Then 12:20pm
Then 3:00 pm
We had this experience about a year and a half ago trying to catch a non-stop to Chicago. After many delays, the flight was cancelled and we had to fly through Seattle about 10 hours late.
At this point we've been on the phone to Alaska Airlines changing our LA flights. Then we got a notice that the LA flight was cancelled. We were still in Anchorage.
There was an announcement that another flight was taking off to Seattle at Gate 6. We walked to Gate 6 and asked if we could get on it. It was almost noon. We could. And we got two seats together. But we had to get on right away and couldn't redo the LA flight from Seattle.
Alaska had also sent us four $12 vouchers for today at ANC or SEATAC.
When we landed at 4:30pm I texted Alaska Airlines and they quickly had us rebooked on a 5:58pm flight to LA. Just enough time to use our coupons to get some yakisoba and board the plane.
In the end, we landed in LA an hour later than originally scheduled.
LAX a couple of years ago banned taxis and Lyft and Uber from the terminals and put them in their own spot. So you can't get out of the terminal and grab a cab. There are shuttle busses or you can walk. When we've waited for the shuttle it's been a long wait, so we walked about 25 minutes. Then there was a long line waiting for cabs. It's a poor solution to the jam of Uber and Lyfts that caused them to do this.
But we're here, at my mom's house and the kids and grandkids are due when their schools are out. So I'm not really complaining. Just reporting.
It seems that Alaska is able to quickly change things by phone, but people waiting at the counters seemed to have more difficulties. And when our flight was changed to 3pm, why couldn't they move us to the other flight that had some empty seats and was leaving 3 hours earlier? If we hadn't walked over, the plane would have left with at least two empty seats if not more.
So I'm impressed with being able to book online or by phone so quickly. And I realize that things happen and planes need repairs that delay them. Though at one point I had to delete my app and then download it again because it stopped showing the changes we'd made.
Our original flight didn't leave until 3:15pm. We got to LA an hour after the original flight landed in Seattle.
I'd also add that that if you are MVP, you get a phone number that seems to be answered much faster than the regular phone number. We haven't flown that much in the last few years - not enough to get MVP - but Alaska has extended so called elite flyers status during COVID. This year they let you get to that magic 20K miles using miles gained through use of your Alaska Airlines VISA card.
And the people who answer the phone are soo polite and competent.
There's a lot to see Saturday from 9am until 10pm. At the Bear Tooth, the Museum, and even coffee with film makers at the Alaska Experience Theater.
The focus has been on the two films at the Bear Tooth Saturday. One is an Alaska focused film on fishing in Bristol Bay and the other has skiing and mountains. Both those kinds of films do well at AIFF festivals, which, I'm sure, is why they're at the Bear Tooth. And Champions of Golden Valley is essentially sold out already. Unearth has some seats left in the balcony.
But for my money, the film to see will be Porcelain War, at the Museum at 6pm. It premiered at Sundance and has won many awards. It's a film about Ukrainian artists fighting the war with art. There's a trailer down below.
So basically, I'm presenting Saturday as chronologically as I can - given that there is overlap between the Bear Tooth and the Museum at 12:30pm
Things start off early at the first of the festival's "Coffee Talk and Panels" at the Alaska Experience theater.
"Debut Dreams: The Journey of First-Time Directors"
SATURDAY December 7th at 9:00AM
Alaska Experience Theater
First features are filled with passion, challenges, and the thrill of discovery. This panel brings together debut directors who dared to dive into filmmaking, sharing insights into their creative processes, struggles, and triumphs. Hear how they’ve shaped their visions into powerful first features and what advice they’d give to those taking their own first steps.
ULTIMATE CITIZENS is the story of Jamshid Khajavi, an extraordinary 65-year-old Iranian American public school counselor who uses the sport of Ultimate Frisbee to help children heal. In an America where many families are quietly, barely getting by, Mr. Jamshid coaches an underdog team of kids on their way to compete in the world’s largest youth tournament. ULTIMATE CITIZENS is a celebration of resilience and belonging, and the third independent feature documentary from award-winning filmmaker Francine Strickwerda.
It first showed in May 2023, and has been at (and won awards at) a number of festivals this year. The AIFF/Goelevant site says it was filmed at Seattle’s Hazel Wolf K-8 school.
Then come two shorts programs. The first conflicts with Champions of Golden Valley at the Bear Tooth.
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM: International Gems – Event Tickets
"Environmental activistErin Brockovichhas signed on to executive produce “Unearth,” a new documentary that will make its world premiere atDOC NYCon Nov. 16.
Directed, produced and shot by Hunter Nolan, “Unearth” tells the story of two sets of siblings — the Salmon sisters and the Strickland brothers — who live in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. Both sets of siblings are alarmed when they learn of and fight against advanced plans for a Pebble Mine — a massive open-pit gold and copper mine — in the vicinity of their homes. The Salmon sisters, Native Alaskans, work on the regulatory front, pushing the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to block the project, while the Strickland brothers, independent fishermen, expose the truth behind what the Pebble Mine developer is telling the public. The 93-minute doc reveals systemic failures in mining and the balance between the need for materials and their environmental costs." (From Variety)
November 16 wasn't that long ago, so AIFF audiences will be among the first to see this Alaska based film. You can learn more about the film at the Rogovy Foundation website.
As of Thursday night, there are some seats left in the balcony at the Bear Tooth.
This film got front page coverage in the Anchorage Daily News yesterday so I won't spent much more time on it here. From their website:
"In the remote mountains of Afghanistan, a newfound passion for skiing attracts young athletes from rival villages to the slopes. With minimal gear and makeshift wooden skis, the determined coach Alishah Farhang organizes a ski race like no other that unites the community in a moment of joy and triumph, just before the country’s collapse
Champions of the Golden Valley captures the spirit of a classic underdog sports story with the heartfelt portrait of a community finding hope amid disrupted dreams. Revealing a stunning unseen side of Afghanistan, it is an uplifting exploration of what it means to be a champion – in all its forms."
As of Thursday night, the Bear Tooth map shows one seat way up in the far corner of the balcony.
For those who have tickets at the Bear Tooth, Golden Valley ends at 2:30pm, and you could make it to the 3pm Alaska shorts at the Museum. But there will be a number of film makers at the conference. If Golden Valley has representatives coming, there will surely be some questions and answers afterward. But if you miss the first or second short, there are more in the program.
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM: Made in Alaska Shorts #1 –
The Gingerbread Man – 9:03
The Glacier Pilot – 10:00
Footprints on Katmai – 21:50
The Grace – 13:00
Mending the Net – 11:36
5:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Alaska Jewish Museum Presents –Demon Box– This film is free at the Museum, it's not clear if you have to buy tickets in advance to be sure you get in. The IMDB page says:
"After festival rejections, a director revises his intensely personal short film about trauma, suicide, and the Holocaust, and transforms it into a painful, blunt and funny dissection of the film and his life."
It also has a short trailer, that I don't see a way to embed here. I'd note that Leslie Fried, the director of the Jewish Museum in Anchorage has unfailingly nominated excellent films every year.
There's still more on Saturday at the Museum
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM: Documentary Feature: Porcelain War at the Museum
This is a Ukrainian movie and from what I can tell is one of the movies to see at the festival. From the NYTimes:
"The latest documentary dispatch from Ukraine, “Porcelain War,” brings a message of hope rooted in art. Making art does feel like an act of resistance during the Russian invasion, when Kremlin propaganda attacks the very existence of Ukrainian culture. But what’s intriguing is that the directors, Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, also celebrate Ukraine’s military defense, making for a jangly mix of idyll and warfare.
Slava, who appears in the film, is both a ceramist and a member of an Ukraine special forces unit who gives weapons training to civilians turned soldiers. His partner, Anya, paints the whimsical figurines he creates, and the irrepressible couple weather the war in bombed-out Kharkiv with their more anxious pal Andrey, a painter and cameraman."
"The film has won 30 prizes around the world, including the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at Sundance. This past weekend, it earned the Grand Jury Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Woodstock Film Festival in New York, as well as the Best Documentary Editing Award. And at the Heartland International Film Festival in Indianapolis, it won the Documentary Feature Grand Prize, which comes with a $20,000 cash award."
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM: Narrative Feature: Midwinter at the Museum
"Nadine is tired and her whole body aches with inflammation and she can sleep. Her son Goldie keeps her active beyond her energy level. Her husband Jack owns a large ad agency and has been a loving husband who has recently expanded his romantic life beyond his marriage to include co-worker Maeve...who happens to be the ex-partner of his sister-in-law Lena. Lena is a burgeoning music writer who, getting over a break-up, takes on an assignment writing about one of her favorite queer indie artists, Mia Hawthorne. Mia is out in the Berkshires, in search of inspiration, a bit frustrated with a high-class problem: the record label wants her to have a co-writer. The mundane poetry of life ensues.
Kamal Harris lost the popular vote to Donald Trump by almost 10 million votes!
How did the election swing so far to Trump? How much was voter suppression - mail-in ballots sent too late to get back, Russian bomb threats and who knows what other shenanigans? Too few polling places in Democratic areas? Suppression of student votes and other forms?
How is it that Trump, after losing the popular vote to Clinton by 3 million votes
now beats Harris by almost 10 million votes? There were 155 million votes in 2020 but only 145 million this time. By all accounts there was a record number of people turning out this time. It would seem some votes are missing.
The numbers we have would mean the gap between increased by 13 million and by 17 million against Biden.
It doesn't add up. I know, racism and misogyny play a role, but not that much. Especially after all the terrible things we learned about Trump after the 2020 election. They've been listed by everyone already from Jan 6 through convictions and indictments. And I'd argue that Harris ran a much better and exciting campaign than Clinton or Biden did. And it sure looked like there were lots of people voting early and on election day.
How is it possible for him to have won the popular vote by a huge margin this time when he lost it significantly the two previous races?
Alaska Totals Don't Match The US Totals
It seems even more suspicious when you look at the Alaska totals. Alaska is a red state, so the increased Trump numbers should be more exaggerated in Alaska than the US total which includes blue states and red states. But it isn't. The opposite.
Harris did better than Clinton, and not quite as well as Biden in Alaska.
Trump beat Clinton by 47,000 votes in Alaska in 2016..
Alaska's a red state. If the number were consistent with the Lower 48 numbers, she should have lost by a lot more than Biden and Clinton lost by. But her numbers were better than Clinton's.
So my dilemma is how to connect the dots in a way that makes sense. Not to make up some wild story, but to offer a plausible hypothesis or two that could be tested by people with better math skills and better data analysis skills and maybe some ability to uncover Russian (or others) tampering with out election computer systems.
One could argue that misogyny and racism gave Trump more votes in the Lower 48, but then why not have a similar change in Alaska? We have among the highest statistics for murdered and raped women.
Or you could blame it on the economy or immigration and border issues. But whatever policy issues you might raise, people in Alaska have as much access as Lower 48 voters to Fox News and odd internet sites that supported Trump with relentless lies.
What makes sense to me is someone tinkered with the computers. Or the ballots. That's not that far fetched. Trump, before the election repeatedly said if he lost it would be because of election rigging.
Trump always projects his own behavior onto others. He's a criminal and rapist who said the Haitian refugees were criminals and rapists. If the Guinness Book of Records had a category on liars, Trump would certainly be in the top five if not the winner. And he calls anyone who puts him in a bad light a liar. He accuses others of his own behaviors.
He told us over and over that the elections were rigged. Does that mean he was rigging them? Not conclusively, but it's a clue that fits the pattern. Just need some serious investigation of this. Just as Trump would have demanded had he lost. To be sure.
Comparing the national gaps between Trump and his three presidential opponents and comparing them to the Alaska gaps raises real questions for me.
I'm not saying it happened, but I'm saying there are serious inconsistencies that require some explanation.
I'm sure the Trump mafia are laughing at how easy it was to get Harris to concede. They knew she would play by the traditional rules that they have flouted since . . . always.
Joe Biden, you've got three months to try out your Supreme Court granted immunity. I'm not calling for you to blow up Mar-A-Lago, but I'd like to see you push some limits to find out more about the Russian Trump election interference and how the numbers got so out of whack. And it might show us that the Supreme Court has more comfort with Trump transgressions than Biden transgressions. If it does, it might be forced to put more restrictions on Trump's immunity.
Oh, and maybe look into the medical records of Trump's ear. We've essentially heard nothing. If he'd really been hit in ear, we'd have heard the doctors explaining it in detail and Trump would be showing off the scar.
While that seems like a lot of votes, there were 207,287 registered voters WHO DIDN'T VOTE. That's fewer than the number who voted, but it's still a huge number. 60% of registered voters voted.
A caveat: Not all the people on the Alaska voter list still live in Alaska or are even alive. But even if the ineligibles equaled 25% (1/4) of the list, that would still leave 150,000 people who didn't think it was important or convenient enough to vote.
In 2020, Trump beat Biden, in Alaska, by 35,742 votes.
This time there were 234,247 people who didn't vote. Say, 175,000 of them were still eligible Alaska voters.
And this time, according to the State's website, there were almost 70,000 more voters. Trump's winning margin shrank by 21,000 votes, by more than 1/3.
We learned a lot more about Trump after the 2016 election.
And I suspect, sadly, that many people voted for Biden (but not Clinton) just because he was a man.
A lot more has happened since the 2020 election.
There was the January 6 insurrection that he promoted.
Another impeachment.
The 50 plus lost Trump court cases challenging Biden's election win.
The various Trump indictments and convictions.
The classified documents stored in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
The overturning of Roe v Wade
The publicity over the Supreme Court's right wing justices' unreported gifts, in one case, millions of dollars worth.
The Court's granting immunity to presidents.
Meanwhile the Biden administration lowered the inflation they inherited and passed huge infrastructure bills which have pumped billions into the US economy and are repairing much of our long neglected bridges, roads, electrical grids, internet access, ports, airports, and many other facilities.
Sure, many die-hard Trump voters limit their intake of information to media that only say good things about Trump and terrible things about Democrats. But many others - Independents, Republicans - who do get more than Fox News and further right social media propaganda.
I have no data on how many of the Alaska non-voters were male or female or something else. But surely there are 30,000 Alaska women, and men with daughters, who for whatever reason, did not vote in 2020, but who have an interest in making sure that the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe, will not lead to restrictions on female health procedures in Alaska. Let's let them know they can flip Alaska blue. Yes, I know it's a stretch, but it's certainly within possibility.
For context, NPR reported in 2020 the margins in the swing states that voted for Biden:
Arizona - 10,457 votes
Georgia - 12,670
Michigan - 154,188
Nevada - 33,506
Pennsylvania - 81,660
Wisconsin - 20,282
Alaska has way fewer people than these states. Nevertheless, there were 237,000 registered voters in Alaska who didn't vote in 2020.
1. The Alaska Supreme Court approved a lower court ruling putting a ballot measure to repeal Ranked Choice Voting after there were a number of challenges to how the group operated. I didn't read the court case [I went back and looked and it's very short and says,
"An opinion explaining this decision will be issued at a later date."
but the Anchorage Daily News reported today that a) they have traditionally decided in favor of putting measures on the ballot and b) the technical issue (a notary's license had expired) wasn't the fault of the petitioners and so getting a signature booklet notarized again, after the deadline, was acceptable. There were other irregularities for which the petitioners got a hefty fine (like hiding funding sources by forming a 'church' in Washington State) but in the end, it will be on the ballot.
2. The anti ranked choice voting push is coming from the die-hard Republicans of Alaska. They keep talking about it hurting them. In one sense, they are right. The change to ranked choice voting includes getting rid of closed primaries. In closed primaries the more extreme and partisan Republican candidates tend to get elected. Open primaries combined with ranked choice voting dilutes the partisanship because more than die-hard Republicans vote in the open primary. But, ranked choice voting means that if there are several people from the same party in the final four from the primary, they don't have to split the vote and lose to a Democrat. They just have to it cooperate and get Republicans to rank other Republican candidates second and even third. If they only vote for one candidate, they aren't helping the party to get the most out of ranked choice voting.
But they can't quite seem to take advantage of it. Last time round (2022, the first time we used ranked choice voting) lots of voters chose one of the two top Republicans first and then either did not rank anyone else or chose the Democratic candidate.
Rather than take advantage of ranked choice voting by cooperating on ranking, they've pushed Dahlstrom out altogether.
4. But the Democratic incumbent got just over 50% of the initial primary vote. The turnout was very low. Only 16% of voters participated. This does not count the people who voted by mail though, and the numbers will go up somewhat and that 50% might change. But that's a formidable lead. And there were 12 total candidates. If a candidate drops out, the next highest candidate moves up to the fourth spot on the ballot.
Also, this primary was not a high interest election. Voters had only the Congressional race, which with ranked choice voting, wasn't going to eliminate the top Democratic or Republican choices, plus a state house race in each district. And one third of the districts had Senate races. [It's supposed to be 1/3 of the senate get voted on each election, but right after redistricting, the first election may have more. (I just went back and checked - there were ten senate races, which is 1/2 of the senators.)]
Unfortunately, I suspect most voters don't really know much about their state house and senate candidates. I was surprised Tuesday at how long some people spent in the voting booths to vote for three races. (I was a poll worker so I could see that.)
But I think there will be a lot more interest when the presidential candidates are on the ballot in November. The US House race will essentially be a two person race. Dahlstrom, the third place candidate had 20% of the vote. The fourth place candidate, Matt Salisbury, had .60% (that's less than one per cent) as of the Tuesday night tally. With Dahlstrom dropping out, there will be room for the next highest vote getter, John Wayne Howe, the Alaska Independent Party candidate who got .57% of the vote.
I suspect a lot of voters who absolutely don't want Trump will put Peltola (the Democrat) first or second, but will skip the strongly anti-abortion Begich as a second choice.
5. Ranked choice voting was approved in 2020 by a slim majority by voters. But I think Alaskans got to see how easy and sensible it was in 2022 (I was a poll worker and got to hear from voters as they brought their filled out ballots to the voting machine). I did have one voter on Tuesday (I worked at the polls again in the primary) who was vehemently opposed to ranked choice voting. "It's unconstitutional. It's one man one vote, not four votes." But I'm guessing he doesn't represent most Alaskan voters, who, I believe will endorse it more strongly this time.
Also, the national organizations supporting ranked choice voting are putting a fair amount of money up to make sure it stays in Alaska. (See the ADN article linked above)
Yesterday was primary election day in Anchorage. It was a beautiful sunny day and I biked over to Kasuun Elementary school (and passed the 1200 km mark for the summer so far).
It was basically unremarkable. People came, showed ID, got their ballots, voted in a voting booth, then brought the ballot to the voting machine where it was scanned.
None of the ballots were rejected by the scanner. (In 2022, the first time we had ranked choice voting, the machine did reject some of the ballots. But the screen explained why - usually the person had voted for more than one person with the same ranking.)
But this election was simple. One US Congress seat. One state house seat. And in some districts there was also a state senate seat.
After the ballot was scanned, voters got a choice of Alaska themed "I Voted" stickers.
I did notice that the scanner was touchy. Most people had a bit of trouble getting the scanner to suck in their ballot. I'm not sure what the people who got it scanned in right away did differently from the others.
But I did discover, toward the end, that if voters turned the privacy sleeve (with the ballot inside) upside down, then took the blank side of the ballot out of the sleeve and put it into the slot on the scanner, it went in with no problem. (They scan from either end of the ballot, whatever side is up.) Because the ballot choices were so few, the backside of the ballot was blank. So no one's votes were visible. That won't be the case in November.
There were also four first time voters I got to congratulate - three young men and a young woman. Maybe there were more, but I wasn't aware. Okay, some will ask how I was aware, so here's how. The first two were very young looking and I just asked, "You're not a first time voter are you?"and they smiled and said yes. The parents of the other two alerted me.
On the negative side, the turnout was really low. Not sure exactly what the percentage was, but we had over 2000 registered voters on the list and when we finished the scanner said that 294 had voted. If we round it off to 2000 total (and there were more than that) 200 votes would be 10%. 300 votes would be 15%. But then I don't know how many people voted by mail. That's easy to do. At least four people dropped off their mail in ballots, which go in the box with the questioned ballots and don't get scanned.
Actually, I can figure this out more precisely. I looked up the Division of Elections page for House District 12.
My estimate wasn't pretty close. I said 300 would have been 15% if there were 2000 voters. There were 2174 registered voters and the turnout was 13.53%. Not an impressive number. The chart also lists 117 Absentee voters and 438 early voters. But that's for the entire district, not just the one precinct. I would have thought there were more.
I'd also note that when I left there was a discrepancy in the numbers. The number of voters listed on the rolls (they are highlighted in yellow and sign their name) was 293. And when the counted all the questioned and special needs ballots and the checked the ballot stubs, minus the spoiled ballots, that came out to 293 as well. I'd helped take down the voting booths and putting away other things and since I was biking, I wanted to take off and asked if I was needed further and so I left without finding out how the discrepancy was resolved. But these counting issues come up every year and the training program spent a fair amount of time on this.
The whole house district voted for the NON incumbent, with a 14.11% voter turnout. I assume that NON refers to non-partisan. The Division of Elections page on parties lists N as non-partisan. Schrage has been part of the House Coalition comprised of Democrats and most Republicans.
The whole Senate district gave the Democratic incumbent a plurality.
And of more interest, I assume, to non-Alaskan readers, voters gave Democratic US House of Representatives member Mary Peltola 50.38% of the vote in a 12 way race! The two major Republican vote getters were Alaska Republican Party endorsed candidate Nick Begich with 26.98%, and Trump and major Congressional Republicans supported candidate Nancy Dahlstrom with 20.01%.
Remember, this is an open (all candidates together) primary and the four top candidates go on to the general election which will be ranked-choice.
The turnout in the Congressional race was also low - 15%. As impressive as winning a majority in a 12 person race with two well supported Republicans, the general election, being a presidential election, will have a lot more voters. While she may not win a majority in the first round, Peltola is in a good position to win enough second place votes to pull
Nick Begich had promised to drop out if he was in third place behind Dahlstrom. Dahlstrom made no such commitment.
In 2022, many who voted for the top Republicans as their first choice vote, gave Democrat Peltola their second place vote. Not another Republican. I would say this is a good sign for the Democratic House elections.
One final note - House District 18, which includes two military bases, had less than 5% turnout. Ouch.
Last Thursday I went to training for election workers for the primary (August 20) and the general election in November. This is another effort on my part to contribute to a fair election.
There was a morning training at 9:00am and I opted for the afternoon training at 1pm. I also dropped off our absentee ballots since the training was at the elections office on Gambell. Plus there was early voting going on too.
The door to the training room was closed - the morning training was going on longer than scheduled. By 1:30 people came out and we went in.
The trainer, who had done the morning training, stayed to do ours. She was there for four and a half hours already and then started our training - which took a little over four hours - without a break.
There was a training manual which covered things like getting things set up the night before (mostly signs and tables and things that didn't need security), set up in the morning (starting at 6am to be ready to open at 7am), then how to work the various stations -
checking names on the register,
giving out the ballots,
questioned ballots (if the name isn't on the register or no ID or other irregularities)
disabled voting procedures (including a large screen for voting with audio and manual controls in braille and other touch sensitive controls),
special needs voters
the voting machine for scanning the ballots
spoiled ballots
Those are most of the topics that were covered. I went through election training in 2022, but that was during COVID and it was all online.
Some things I learned:
1. Questioned ballots - anyone that has any irregularity - they aren't on the register, no ID, at the wrong precinct, or basically any situation where someone insists on voting when they aren't clearly eligible (ie coming after the polls close). We were told that all questioned ballots will be examined by election officials and they will determine if the vote should count.
Since the questioned ballots are in special envelopes with the voters name and info on them, I asked about what we say if they ask if people will know how they voted. The answer was that there's a clear procedure for sorting questioned ballots by what will be counted first. If they vote out of their district, they won't get to vote for the local candidates, but will get to vote for US House, for example. Then the ballots, still in the secrecy sleeves, are taken out of the envelopes, so the ID is gone. Later they get put through the appropriate scanner.
2. Special Needs Voters - these are people who cannot come to the polls for any reason. A representative comes and fills out a form on an envelope, gets a ballot, goes to the voter, lets them vote and fill out the rest of the form. The representative has to sign again after the ballot is filled out and bring it back to the polls. Who does this? People in nursing homes was an example, but they also mentioned a busy chef who couldn't leave the restaurant. The ballot has to be returned by 8pm election day and the form has to be filled out correctly, including the representative's second signature.
It seemed to me that for most situations, it would be far easier for everyone to get a mail in ballot. There's less to fill out and less running around. This certainly would be a better option for the nursing home people. The only people this makes sense tome for, are people who are incapacitated at the last minute. Say someone who tests positive for COVID the night before the election. It also seemed to me that this option is ripe for abuse.
3. Tracking Ballots. There are lots of measures to insure that all the ballots are accounted for. The pads with the ballots have numbers on them (but not the ballots when they are torn out of the pad). The scanners count the number of ballots inserted successfully. All that has to be tallied against the registered and the number of questioned ballots and special needs ballots and spoiled ballots (torn up because the voter made a mistake.) But that still leaves the possibility of someone playing with card in the voting machine. There are paper ballots that could be counted to see if they match what the machine says, but the state doesn't really test many if any precincts to check.
4. The training was thorough. More than most people can digest in the four plus hour training. The manual is a backup, but doesn't have all the information we were given. Our trainer knew her stuff thoroughly. I'm hoping that the others I work with will remember the things I missed or forget.
5. There was additional training for people who will be in charge of the equipment - like the voting machines and the touchscreens.
6. There's a number to call if there are non-English speakers to connect to someone who, hopefully, speaks the voter's language. It wasn't clear how many languages are available. There are no interpreters for the hearing impaired.
Someone left a link to this book in a comment on a totally unrelated post - at least I didn't see any connection.
But Rachel worked in the University of Alaska Anchorage bookstore for many years and put together many (100? 200?) forums in the bookstore. Usually there was an author (or two) speaking, but sometimes it was on a topic of current interest.
They were small intimate affairs where the audience had lots of opportunity to interact with the speakers.
These soirees were exactly what should be happening on a University campus.
I'm sure this is a noteworthy book so I'm delighted to let people know about it.
"Alaskan poet John Haines has been gone for more than a decade now, but his singular voice stays with me—the deep quiet of it and its enchantment, the spareness of his lines—Li Po transposed to the far north. Much else is here to muse on and admire—his charming letters to Rachel Epstein, photos of his homestead in Richardson, transcripts of talks given, memoirs of a vanished Alaska, selected essays, notes on the imagination’s relationship with the natural world, even recollections of his service on a destroyer in the Pacific toward the end of WW II. May the Owl Call Again is a moving and memorable collection, and at its heart is Haines’ haunting poetry.
—Marc Hudson, poet, translator, and an emeritus professor at Wabash College.
His most recent book of poems is East Of Sorrow.
May the Owl Call Again bears witness to the last years of Haines' life—his thoughts, humor, melancholy, a profound awareness of Alaska’s rhythms, and his struggles with engagement in a broken world. But, above all, it is a meditation on friendship and the solace of intimacy that can be found in the handwritten page. It’s a testament to care, the aches of connection and solitude, and the consolation of finding kinship with another. I found myself reading it all at once and walking away with a profound sense of gratitude for Epstein sharing this Haines with all of us.
—Freya Rohn, poet and founder of Ariadne Archive"
For Anchorage folks I'd recommend calling Writers' Block bookstore ((907) 929-2665) to order it if it's not in. Buy Alaskan authors writing about Alaskan people from local Alaskan bookstores.
"'Citizen Sleuth' is a darkly funny, engaging, and thrilling documentary about a true crime podcast that has all the fascinating twists and turns of true crime, while flipping the script and focusing on the voice behind the podcast. The documentary chronicles not a tragic death, but the rise and fall of a podcast dedicated to it, and the complicated ways its host became trapped in her own narrative."
This is 82 minutes, so there should be plenty of time to get to the Museum for the rest of the films starting at 5pm.
"ARIEL BACK TO BUENOS AIRES follows the tumultuous siblings Davie and Diana Vega as they return to Argentina, country of their birth and learn to dance tango. They uncover secrets about their family history that call into question everything they hold to be true, but that free Davie from his existential misery. A story of how the past holds us in its embrace – only by engaging with it can we find freedom. A lacerating love letter to the city of Buenos Aires."
The website says it is also streaming on Apple TV. It's won a number of awards at film festivals this year.
Especially on a glorious day like it was Monday. It was even clear and beautiful in Seattle.
Over the always snowy Chugach Range still in Prince William Sound.
Flying over the Chugach Range with Denali in the background.
The last edge of the Chugach, Anchorage lies ahead below and Foreaker and Denali in the background. (Even my polarized filter can't eliminate all the rainbow in the plane window when the light is like it was.)
On a normal day you fly over the mountains, then past Anchorage out over the Inlet and then circle back to land from the west. The wind mills of Fire Island in the foreground, then a bit of Inlet, then Anchorage and the Chugach Range. Looking back toward where we came from.
Looking down Turnagain Arm.
Another view of the Inlet - mudflats are showing
Two more before we land
The Anchorage Bowl still hasn't gotten any snow. A bit late. Probably as soon as I post this, it will show up.
"There's something of a Forrest Gump quality to Vic Fischer's life - he lived through many historic moments in the history of the 20th Century, and played important roles in a number of them. His father was the famous journalist, Louis Fischer, who was married to a Russian writer. He was born in Berlin in 1924 spent his early years in Berlin and Moscow, escaping from Stalin purges through intervention from Eleanor Roosevelt in 1939."
Many remarkable men and women have made Alaska their home. None of their lives was more remarkable than Vic's.
Vic at his 95th birthday party in May 2019.
In the legislative halls of Juneau 2010
Vic was at the rally to gather signatures for the Dunleavy recall in 2019. I'm pretty sure Dunleavy would have been recalled if it hadn't been for COVID. The organizers got the required 28,000 signatures in two weeks. That's phenomenal. So getting the recall petition certified was easy. But the next round required another petition to get it on the ballot. And as the group was ready to start the second petition, COVID shut everything down. No gatherings. People weren't going places like the library or the DMV where it was easy to get signatures. And the recall movement died of COVID.
Here's Vic in Juneau talking to Rep. David Gutenberg. I was blogging the legislature and a question had come up about what was intended in the Alaska Constitution regarding the Boundary Commission. Vic, who'd been a member of the Constitutional Convention was there and I was able to get his interpretation of what the Constitution intended on that issue. Unfortunately, that video is a blank on the page, so I can't post it now. [I saved some videos on Vidler which eventually started charging. They did help me by sending me all the video I had up there, but it was a complicated process of redoing them all. I got a number redone and up on YouTube, but not all. I'm guessing that's what happened to this one.]
I understand that email giants like Google Mail have much glitzier email options than a local telephone company is likely to match. But I am concerned that we will be down to just a couple of totally dominant email companies before long.
[If you don't want to hear about ACS sluggishness and fiber optic, skip to the bottom.]
Since I don't have a GCI account I wasn't worried. But I do have ACS - formally the Municipality owned telephone company that went on its own and later got bought out by ATN International. While technical help is still reasonably good when I call, trying to get information about anything else is almost impossible.
I had much better response from the FCC in Washington DC when I complained about a rate increase that was going to be used, ACS said, "to upgrade internet speed." Since I'm in a mid-town pocket that still gets 1 MBPS, I tried to find out if my neighborhood was planned for optical fiber. No one could tell me. I got answers like:
ACS: They don't show the maps.
Me: Why not?
ACS: Because they don't want angry customers when it doesn't happen as scheduled.
Me: Is my neighborhood even scheduled at all?
ACS: I can't tell you that. (I don't know.)
The FCC sent them communications saying they needed to respond in 30 days. When they didn't, FCC said that was unusual. Same thing after 60 days. After 90 days someone said they'd bump up my request to someone who could do more. Still no response.
When I called the FCC again, they said they'd gotten a response. I said I didn't. FCC (not ACS) sent me a copy. I had objected to paying increased amounts to pay for upgrades if my neighborhood with the slowest service ACC has (my package was grandfathered in and they don't offer internet in my neighborhood any more) wasn't going to be upgraded.
ACS' response was: We are unable to upgrade service. Of course I checked out other options, but in Anchorage we're limited. GCI customers complain about GCI bitterly. Aurora Broadband can't reach my neighborhood. (Note - I'm in midtown. Just over a mile from ACS headquarters.)
So about five weeks ago I was surprised when a young man was at my door to sign me up for ACS fiber optic. He said it would be ready in 3-4 weeks. Then email I then got from ACS said 9-14 weeks. But they really are putting in fiber optic lines (they're bright orange.) I talked to a supervisor who said he's just in charge of the outside lines (underground and by telephone pole) and someone else would be attaching it to the house. Before the snow flies, he said.
All that brings me around to ACS email. Losing your email account is a pain because you have to figure out how to transfer important email somewhere else. I suppose there must be relatively easy ways to do that. Losing an email address called GCI.com is no big deal.
I'm worried that I will lose my Alaska.net email address the same way. And I have no confidence whatsoever that ACS and its East Coast owners care one bit. They'll follow GCI's lead and force us to find other email providers.
They don't realize that many of us would rather have a balky email account that isn't part of a giant corporation that likely is data mining our email. And with the Alaska.net in the name, we feel the same way that Alaska USA members felt.
So I hope there's some local entrepreneurs ready to buy or otherwise acquire the Alaska.net email addresses should ACS decide to abandon it.
The Alaska Supreme Court finally issued its Opinion explaining its reasoning for its earlier Orders. (Three its in one sentence, sorry, I don't have time to make this pretty.) See this post for more. The immediate consequence of the decision is that the Alaska Redistricting Board was given 90 days to object to keeping the interim plan in place for the next ten years.
For those not up on all these details - probably most people - the Court ruled the Board's last two plans faulty because of gerrymandering. So the court made a change in the Board's plan for the 2022 election. The deadline for candidates to file to run for office was nearing and they needed to know what districts they would be running in. So, that was the interim plan.
Most of the state map has been approved and won't be affected. There are only a few house districts in north Anchorage that could possibly be realigned into different Senate seats. There is no way the court will allow the Board to make changes that would give Republicans more power in the legislature. So it would seem that remanding the interim plan back to the Board is just a courtesy, maybe a way for the court to allow the Board to technically approve this plan as the actual plan for the next ten years.
But that means the Board has to
Reconvene and meet to
approve the interim plan as the final plan, or
come up with an alternative within those very narrow options they have left and send it with a rationale back to the court
Do nothing and let the 90 days and let the interim plan become the final plan by default
Is Bethany Marcum still on the Board?
At the Alaska Press Club Conference Friday and Saturday, the Court's decision, which was announced Friday morning, was a big topic among some of the journalists who have reported on the Redistricting Board.
One of the questions that came up was whether Board Member Bethany Marcum was still on the Board. She's been nominated to the University of Alaska Board of Regents and some speculated that would mean she was off the Board.
So I emailed Peter Torkelson who still is the Executive Director for the Board. I asked
Is Marcum still on the Board?
If not, since Governor appointed her, would he be appointing a new member?
Are all the other members still on the Board?
Peter's normal quick response was that Marcum had resigned on March 23, 2023. And the legal advisors believe that since the Governor appointed her, he would be the person legally entitled to appoint her successor. He pointed out that Governor Parnell did that in 2011 for another Board member. (Even though I covered the Board, I don't remember that at all. But perhaps it happened early in the process. I didn't start covering them until about March 2011.) He didn't mention other members so I assume they are all still officially on the Board.
A new member could be someone who followed the process closely - say a Randy Ruedrich - but there aren't too many people who would really understand all the details and nuances of what the Board has been through. I mention Randy even though the Court pointed out that the Constitution requires that appointments be made without regard to political party. I simply don't think that Governor Dunleavy is capable of appointing someone who isn't committed to Dunleavy's political goals. Unless he believes, as I do here, that there really aren't any changes to be legally made that would make a difference except to shake up a couple of districts and the incumbents of those districts.
The Board's Eagle River Senate decisions, which passed 3-2, and were vigorously and loudly objected to by the minority members Banke and Borromeo, were judged by the Court to be unconstitutional gerrymandering.
I suspect the most dignified thing for the Board to do now would be to meet and vote to endorse the interim plan as the final plan and send their approval to the Supreme Court. Board Members Marcum and Simpson were the most partisan Republican promoters of the gerrymandering. The third Republican on the Board, John Simpson, went along with that, but I think he was less committed to that decision than the other two.
I'd note that during the 2010 Redistricting process I asked then Board Attorney Mike White about a new plan being challenged on gerrymandering grounds. His reply was that no plan had ever been overturned because of political gerrymandering and he wasn't worried. Well, this round, the Supreme Court has definitively said that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional.
I'm slowly reading through the Court's Opinion. My present plan is read through the Opinion and identify what I see as the key points that are new. Then I want to pull up the post(s?) I've written about what I hoped the Court would address. Then I can see if they addressed all the issues I was concerned about. So far, they have addressed the issue of the Governor intentionally appointing Republicans to the Board. And they weren't just Republicans, they were hard core Republicans with a history of working with the Republican Party.
I was concerned about how blatant the political appointments were this time round and that if the Court didn't address it, it would become an unenforceable part of the Constitution. But they did address it - but I have to read more of the Opinion to see how it informs their conclusions. I suspect it played a role in their deciding that the Eagle River Senate pairings were politically motivated.
We'll see. Meanwhile my previous post extracts the outline of their Opinion (all the headings) so you can have something like a Table of Contents of the Opinion. There's also a link to the decision.
Just one more piece of trivia. I've tried to pay attention to follow the Court's language. Particularly regarding "decisions," "orders," and "opinions." So I checked online and here's what Cornell's Law School says:
An order tells the parties to a case or cases something that they should do. Orders can deal with housekeeping matters, such as scheduling or permission to file a brief, or with something substantive and important, such as whether the case will be dismissed or not. An order may accompany an opinion or opinions, but if it does not, it tends to be brief and not to offer reasons. It may deal with one or more cases, and may dispose of those cases or not.
An opinion is a general term describing the written views of a judge or judges with respect to a particular order. Not all orders--including important orders, and including in both the district courts and the courts of appeals--have opinions. A single order by a court might produce a zero or more majority opinions, zero or more concurring opinions, zero or more dissenting opinions, and zero or more opinions that concur in part and dissent in part. It is also possible that a decision produces other documents that are not opinions -- for example, a syllabus, appendix, or summary describing all the other documents related to the decision.
