The Washington Post Also Thinks Something is Wrong

Blue_In_AK

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Fri Nov-07-08 01:31 PM
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The Washington Post Also Thinks Something is Wrong

with Alaska's Turnout, quoted in The Immoral Minority http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/

Elections officials, party leaders and voters are wondering what happened this Tuesday in the Last Frontier, where turnout was surprisingly low and two lawmakers who have been the focus of FBI corruption investigations appear to have been reelected despite polling suggesting they would be ousted.

The final voter turnout numbers won't be available until absentee ballots are counted, which could take at least another week. But this year's total is not expected to eclipse Alaska's 66 percent turnout in 2004 or its 60 percent clip in 2000. (This is especially odd given that Alaska's Board of Elections saw a 12.4 percent hike in turnout for the August primaries, before Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was selected as the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee.)

Alaska returns (without the uncounted absentee and contested ballots) show the McCain-Palin ticket garnering 136,348 votes. In 2004, President Bush got 190,889 votes, a "significant disparity", the Anchorage Press reported. "These numbers only add to the oddity of this election in Alaska; in the run-up to Tuesday, Alaskan voters seemed energized to vote for a ticket with our governor on it, despite the barrage of criticism Palin faced."

Couple the dip in support for McCain-Palin with surprising victories for longtime Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who was found guilty Oct. 27 on seven felony charges, and Rep. Don Young, who is under investigation by the FBI, and a lot of pollsters and voters were left stumped.

"Stumped" does not even begin to adequately define my feelings on this. I am outraged.

This was the most important election of our generation and we are supposed to believe that the turnout was less then in 2004? But the number show that when Bill Clinton ran in 1994 our turnout was 82.9%. Really? Clinton outdrew Obama ? In what universe is that possible?

The amazingly accurate website fivethirtyeight also recognizes that things are not adding up in my home state. They start their analysis with this statement:

There are three plausible explanations I can think of to explain this discrepancy.

The they go on to make two fairly intelligent, and almost plausible explanations for why the numbers seem low. But this is Alaska and I know better, so let us skip to number three which reflects my own paranoid take on this topic:

The third possibility is that a lot of those "questionable" ballots are Democratic ones, and that there have been irregularities in the voting tally. Although this is the least likely possibility, Alaska is a provincial state with some history of corruption, and Democrats ought to be making sure that too many of their ballots haven't been disqualified.

BINGO!!

So the approach I am going to take is to assume that there is some hanky panky being perpetrated by the Republicans and to act accordingly. I base this on past elections, and by the number of Republican politicians currently sitting behind bars. (Soon to possibly include Ted Stevens who is currently leading in his race for the Senate. Seem plausible?)

So today I started making phone calls.

I called the Alaska Democratic Party.

I called the Mark Begich campaign.

I called the Ethan Berkowitz campaign.

And I called the Obama campaign.

I talked to all of them off the record so I will not yet divulge exactly what I learned, but I will say that I am not the only one wearing my tinfoil hat today.

But as for myself, even though the election is over it does not mean I am not "fired up and ready to go"! And I bet I can find a few other people who feel exactly the same.