The Numbers Don't Add Up - The National Gaps vs Alaska Gaps

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 

"[Clinton] outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certified final election results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia."

and to Biden by 7 million votes, 

"Biden’s popular vote margin over Trump tops 7 million"

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 Div of Elections

Trump beat Biden by 36,000 votes in Alaska.  

Alaska Div of Elections    xxx

  

But Trump only beat Harris by 39,000 votes this time.  3000 votes more than Biden lost by, but 8,000 votes fewer than Clinton lost by in Alaska.  

Alaska Div of Elections

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.  

 

Trump Beat Biden In Alaska By Only 35K Votes, 234K Didn't Vote

In 2016, Trump beat Clinton, in Alaska, by 46,943 votes.  

From Alaska Div of Elections

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.  

From: Alaska Div of Elections

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.

A lot of things happened during Trump's presidency from a pandemic during which Trump said repeatedly that COVID would just go away. See this CNN graphic of his many such proclamations along with the increasing number of cases.

And Trump was impeached once.  

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. 

Ranked Choice Voting Back On Nov Ballot/Nancy Dahlstrom Drops Out of US House Race

 Let's see if I can write a quick, short post.  

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.   

3.  Today, we also learned that Republican candidate Nancy Dahlstrom, who came in third behind Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola and Republican challenger Nick Begich III, dropped out of the race.  Begich had pledged to drop out if he wasn't the top GOP candidate, but Dahlstrom hadn't made such a pledge.  But she got A LOT of comments on Twitter yesterday telling her to drop out.  Will it matter?  She could have just told her voters to vote for Begich as their second choice.  

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)

Poll Working - And Peltola Does Well

 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.  

Election Worker Training

 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.  

Rachel Epstein Book on John Haines - May the Owl Call Again

 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.  

From the Amazon page.

"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.  

AIFF2023: Saturday Dec. 2: Lots of Shorts, Trip to Argentina

 SATURDAY - December 2, 2023  - Anchorage International Film Festival

BEAR TOOTH  - NOON

4  Shorts - Made in Alaska - view list here.

BEAR TOOTH - 3pm

Documentary Narrative:  Citizen Sleuth

SlashFilm says:

"'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.

ANCHORAGE MUSEUM - 5pm

7 Shorts - "Love Me" Program   See the list here.

ANCHORAGE MUSEUM - 7pm  *This program has a warning:  18 and over only.

6 Shorts - "Do We Still Need Feminism" Program  See the list here.

ANCHORAGE MUSEUM - 9pm  

Feature Narrative - Ariel Back To Buenos Aires 

From the film's website: 

"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.  

 

45+ Years And Flying Into Anchorage Is Still Amazing

 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.  

Good Bye Vic! Miss You Already

[Fishcher photo from a University webpage
which no longer is working.] 

I believe this is a picture of Vic when he was a delegate at the Alaska Constitutional Convention.  

Like his good friend Lidia Selkregg, he was someone who made everyone he talked to feel special.  

 

 Here's some of what I wrote about Vic's autobiography - To Russia With Love - on his 95th birthday, four years ago. 

"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.]

But I do have this video of Vic speaking at the "It's Our Oil" rally in 2013.  You can see the whole video (with other speakers) at the original post.

Alaskans have lost one of our greatest statesmen and a great human being..  

Alaska Retires the COVID-19 Dashboard. Will Post Weekly Bulletins On Infectious Diseases, Invludimg COVID

 

This announcement is on the September Alaska COVID-19 Dashboard.

I checked the Alaska COVID-19 Dashboard today, and learned it is now an archive:

"The COVID-19 Cases Dashboard was updated for the last time on September 12, 2023.

Starting in Oct. 2023, we will be publishing a weekly bulletin on respiratory disease case 

trends, including COVID-19."

The upside is that we now will get weekly updates (they've been monthly for a while now.)

If there is a link to the new tracking system on the page, I can't find it. Another page says it will begin in October.

GCI To Abandon Internet. Will ACS Follow? But Alaska.net Has Value GCI.net Doesn't Have

The Anchorage Daily News reported the other day that GCI (one of the local phone and internet companies) will end its email service by mid 2024.  

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.

But ACS email addresses are Alaska.net.  Therewhen Alaska USA Federal Credit Union changed its name to Global Federal, the letters to the editors at the ADN were swamped with complaints.  

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.  

Supreme Court's Redistricting Opinion Next Steps. Is Marcum Still On The Board?

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 

1. Reconvene and meet to 
1. approve the interim plan as the final plan, or
2. come up with an alternative within those very narrow options they have left and send it with a rationale back to the court
2. Do nothing and let the 90 days and let the interim plan become the final plan by default
3. 
   

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.
• A decision is a loose term for the set of opinions that accompany an order, combined with that order.  There may be more than one case associated with a particular decision.     
• 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.

What we got Friday was an Opinion.  

My Indonesian Yacht Cruise Was A Raft Trip On The Yentna With Ted Turner

[For those who are used to Twitter and need the this to read this in 20 seconds, skip down to the bolded question, What does this have to do with yachts cruising Indonesian islands? For those that want some context (and a little history on how the Anchorage Assembly first got onto cable, start at the beginning.]

 

Michael Shamberg's Guerilla Television had put video literacy into my life goals.  It pointed out that we are taught to read and write at school and given some skills in recognizing when written language is being used to manipulate us. (This was the 70s when schools still did that.  I think many still do, but I'm guessing a lot don't.)  

Shamberg's premise was that we were getting so much news via television that we needed that same sort of training in videography.  The book was a treatise on what was wrong with how news was created and a citizens handbook for how to make people's videos and how citizen created videos would change the world.  This was at a time when video cameras were pretty bulky and pricey, and there weren't any outlets for citizens to show their videos. There weren't even any Blockbusters yet.

I'd say Shamberg was pretty visionary. Eventually cameras on phones gave everyone a pocket video recorder and YouTube offered everyone a people's theater where anyone could show their videos and anyone could watch them.  Social media have extended the audience even further.  

And so when cable television was beginning to show up I was paying attention.  I was reading cable industry journals and even went to a few conferences on cable public access.  I was especially excited about the contracts around the country that required the cable companies to set up public access video studios with cameras and editing equipment so people could make their own videos. They also required public access channels to play those citizen made videos on. Sure, the audience was limited to cable viewers, but it was a step in the right direction. 

Multivision had bid for the contract in Anchorage.  This was 1982 or 83.  I was working on loan from the University to the Municipality of Anchorage for a couple of years.  I read the Multivision proposal and was dismayed that there was no provision for a public access video studio or a channel for people's video.  I kept telling Cathy Allen, Mayor Knowles' chief of staff (I think that was her title) that the Municipality should be demanding that such provisions - modeled from Outside cable agreements - be included in Multivisions' contract.  She kept treating me like I was crazy.  I kept sending her memos (yeah, email was not available yet)  about the Alaska Public Utility  Commission's meetings on cable.  One was coming up soon where there would be public testimony. On the day of the meeting I got a call to come up to Allen's office right away.  She'd just come back from a national conference and a city manager from a big city had sat her down and told her how important it was to have public access in cable contracts. Nothing I hadn't been telling her, but he was more credible to her than I had been.  So yes, I could go to the meeting and represent the Muni that afternoon.  

Fortunately, I'd been reading the proposal and comparing the prices they were proposing for monthly subscriptions and had lots of information about public access in other cities.  

So there I was, at the last minute, running down the street to the meeting.  There weren't a lot of people there and they all seemed to be Multivisions boosters.  Then my turn to talk came.  I nervously compared Multivisions prices to Outside prices and said something like, "I understand it is more expensive to operate in Alaska than it is Outside, but it's NOT three times as expensive!"  I also talked about how most cities were requiring cable companies to have public access studies and a public access channel.  And I sat down.

At the next break, I was mobbed by six or seven people asking me, essentially, "who the hell are you?" did  I really represented the Muni.  

As time went by I was back arguing that Multivisions should be televising the Assembly meetings live.  Not possible they said.  At that time they were meeting in the Muni's Tudor Road buildings and they said it wasn't wired for cable.  It would have to wait until the new Loussac Library opened.  

But for some reason the Assembly  had to move out of the Tudor building and temporarily went to the new Convention Center on 5th Avenue.  And I knew that building was wired.  By that time I'd gotten some others to join me and we had set up a non-profit for this project - something like Anchorage Media Access Group.  I lobbied the Assembly members and they agreed to a six month trial and allotted a paltry sum - maybe $3000 for that.  Our non-profit sent out an RFP to every third video business in the Anchorage media resources book.  We got two bids.  One was way beyond the money the Assembly offered.  The other was a budding videographer who agreed to do it at a ridiculously low price with the help of volunteers (ourselves and a few others) who would staff the cameras for him.  

At first, he balked. He couldn't trust his expensive cameras to volunteers.   But he relented when we pointed out that he couldn't afford to do it any other way.  And so the Assembly began its six months experiment being broadcast live on Anchorage cable.  

While Assembly members had had a number of doubts - it would lead to grandstanding, those without cable wouldn't have access, etc. - after several weeks they were all won over.  They had so many people say they saw them on cable and they had people showing up saying they were watching at home and had to come down to testify.  At the end of the six months they approved a much larger budget and our videographer got the contract and we stopped having to supply volunteers.  We disbanded our non-profit and gave the Assembly back the $500 we still had left and asked them to use it to support televising the Assembly. 

 

What does this have to do with yachts cruising Indonesian islands? 

Somewhere along this cable path, I got an invitation from Multivision to go on a float trip on the Yentna River with Ted Turner whom they were bringing up to Alaska.  That sounded very cool, but unlike a certain US Supreme Court justice, I didn't consider accepting for a second.  

I understood that I hadn't been randomly selected for this honor, but that it had to do with my advocacy for a better deal for Anchorage citizens and my advocacy for getting the Anchorage Assembly live on cable. And that this might be their way to get me to tone it down or who knows?.  I thanked them and said I couldn't accept their offer. 

Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, seems to have had no qualms about accepting annual half-a-million dollar vacations and didn't see it necessary to report these on his annual financial disclosure forms.  

The wealthy Republicans have been smart and have taken a long range planning approach to maintain power. When Bork got turned down for the Court, they apparently realized democracy was no longer enough.  

Lobbying has been a traditional way to get legislators to vote against the interests of their constituents.  This relationship is strengthened by campaign contributions. And secrecy. But even better would be owning a Supreme Court that decided their way if the legislature wouldn't.  

The Democrats have not been as Machiavellian and were not very good as spotting the stealth takeover  of the Supreme Court the Republicans, through the Federalist Society, had worked on for so many years.  

And with Trump as president, they succeeded in taking over the Court.  Justice Kennedy abruptly resigned to make room for Kavanaugh.  I'm still certain there's a cloak and dagger story about how Kennedy was convinced to step down, that would include his son's work for Deutsche Bank, the last major bank still willing to lend money to Trump for his projects. And Justin Kennedy was the man who made those loans happen. 

But since Trump essentially turned the job of picking his court nominees over to the Federalist Society, it's pretty clear that they had something to do with Kennedy's resignation as well.  The first link is to a speech by Sen. Whitehouse - the Senate's most active and vocal observer of how the Federalist Society has managed the sharp lurch to the right of the Supreme Court.  But for those of you who need a different source, here's a report from The Hill.  Speculation?  Sure.  But a lot of clues point in the right direction. And like Thomas' vacations with the Crows, I'm pretty certain there's lots we don't yet know.  At least there are facts and motives pointing in this direction, which is way more than the Republicans have for every major scandal they scream about daily.  

Breakdown of Norms

From Oxford Bibliographies:

"[Norms] are most commonly defined as rules or expectations that are socially enforced. Norms may be prescriptive (encouraging positive behavior; for example, “be honest”) or proscriptive (discouraging negative behavior; for example, “do not cheat”)."

Basically, norms are the rules that are socially, rather than legally, enforced.  When people break the norms, public opinion is the force that 'rules' the consequences.  Politicians lose elections, officials resign their posts.  

But we're in a period where Republicans, particularly, are no longer constrained by norms.  They're no longer constrained by laws. (Sure, politicians on both sides have fudged the law forever, but they did it clandestinely, not flagrantly out in the open.)  While Trump is by far the most egregious example, his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate have gone along.  The Senate had the power to remove him from office after the House voted for impeachment.  Twice.  

They didn't.  Instead, they rammed through the nominations of Kavanaugh and Barrett.  

Not all the Republicans are completely craven, but they are all much more interested in their reelections than they are in maintaining traditional norms of appearing to support the public interest, 

And Fox News, particularly, has worked closely with Trump to make sure their viewers are fed the stories they (the viewers) want to hear, no matter how much they deviate from truth.  Those Republicans who stood up to Trump, even slightly, have either retired (rather than face Trump's cult in the primaries) or they were defeated in the primaries.  Alaska's Senator Murkowski is the only exception I know of.  She used a write-in campaign to overcome a primary defeat in 2012.  In 2022, Alaska's new Ranked ChoiceVoting went into effect, which eliminated closed party primaries and put all candidates for each office into one primary. 

The wealthy Right Wingers know that their ideas are not popular with the voters.  Ending abortion, no restrictions on guns, racial discrimination, election manipulation are all opposed by healthy majorities of the general population. 

To win, Republicans have to rig the game.  Pack the Supreme Court with judges who rule in favor of business most of the time.  Gerrymander state voting districts to get far more Republicans elected even when the actual numbers of both parties are much more even.  Suppress the votes of minorities and the young in as many ways as they can think of.  Oppose all bills to help overcome the disparities in wealth, access to food, housing, education, and health care. In fact oppose all legislation that might be good for the country that Biden could take credit for.  And now we're seeing the truly power obsessed trying to control women's rights to decide their own health care, even banning out of state travel for those seeking abortions.  

With a strong Supreme Court majority, Republican governors are writing laws so far out of the bounds of US social norms and violate decades old Supreme Court precedents.  They are doing this in anticipation of the new Federalist Society judges overturning all those precedents as just as they overturned Roe v. Wade.  Voting rights?  We're back to a post Civil War Supreme Court that used States' Rights to allow disenfranchisement of blacks and lynchings among other terrible practices.  

And when Clarence Thomas says in his brief official statement that he read the rules and consulted with others and they said he didn't have to report transportation, he's telling me that he has NO business being a US Supreme Court Justice.  

• First, this is so extreme an example - half a million dollar vacations for 20 years!  Any reasonable person knows this sort of 'gift' needs to be reported  (I didn't have to go to law school to know accepting a pricey trip with a celebrity was the wrong thing to do.)
• Second, if Thomas has trouble interpreting such obvious and simple disclosure rules for judicial gifts, then he is hardly qualified to interpret the US Constitution. 
• Third, if he is capable of such interpretation, then he's intentionally flouting the rules and the norms for his own advantage.  In this case his perceived best interest was non-disclosure. One would assume that is also how he often interprets the law and the Constitution in his Supreme Court decisions.  
• Fourth, hanging out with the Crows and their yachting friends helps to shape his ideas of his own best interests and appropriate interpretations of the Constitution.

CONCLUSIONS

Like most such issues, this one is entangled in many overlapping contexts of law, of history, of politics, of economics, of ethics, that it is difficult to discuss it without either leaving important points out or without getting so long and complicated people won't finish.  

A key issue I'm leaving out is accountability of career and elected public officials.  Of course Trump and Fox have so violated societal norms of behavior and of truth telling that we seem to be in a completely different place than we were five or six years ago.  Though another part of me believes that the craziness we hear these days has always existed.  But today's technology enables much more of it to be seen and heard by the public.  

If that's true, the good news is that all this ugliness is being exposed - from police brutality to overt racism (OK, those two are probably intertwined), to sexual abuse, etc.  The bad news is those with norm-violating behavior and thoughts have found support for their anti-democracy desires.  

Before the Republicans get ultimate control of the courts and can manipulate all elections, we need to get all the folks who are still within traditional norms, but have given up on voting, to go vote.  There are still tens of millions of people who have come up with excuses not to vote.  (And this is also in part due to the Right's propaganda about how terrible government is, Democrats are, and how corrupt elections are.)  

Those who want Democracy to carry on have an obligation to get everyone who doesn't normally vote, to vote in the next few elections.  And the Republicans' extreme power grabbing - abortions bans, LGBTQ+ baiting, anti-Semitism, book banning, expulsion of duly elected legislators are all helping to get those voters to the polls in the next elections.   

We need enough Democrats in state legislatures and in Congress to overcome Republican attempts to turn the US into an authoritarian regime favoring wealthy white males who distort the Bible to further their interests.