Alaska and the Elections
(Re)call of the wild
On Thursday, 6 Nov., our friend Mike asked in an e-mail message, “What’s going on in Alaska? Somethings not right!” and provided a link to Something Smells Fishy in Alaska, a post written by Shannyn Moore for The Brad Blog. Verrry interesting. I subsequently found Crunching the Numbers in Alaska, a post at Mudflats, a blog maintained by “AKMuckraker.”
In response to these postings, Gary said:
I know there are a lot of theories about how the Diebold rig works. I don’t really claim to know what they do but I don’t have any doubt that they do something. That said, after being utterly convinced that Kerry won Virginia in 2004, the VA vote count as announced looks really plausible this year. If somebody came along & said the Obama victory margin was trimmed by 6 to 10%, I would wonder, out of natural suspicion, but the local tallies matched the local polls completely. Local polls showed O. ahead 5 to 1 in town and 2 to 1 in the county and that’s what we got. More to the point, the O. vote matches the Perriello vote with P. beating the noxious Goode in Nelson as well as Alb & Duckville and being all over him in the other surrounding counties. This is how it was supposed to be. Though I don’t think the rural counties experienced a sudden outbreak of progressivism, I think they did revert to their historical baseline of agrarian Readjusterism, which has been kind to black candidates all across the state whenever there were any black candidates, which is not often. In short, looking at the riskier parts of rural VA, it looks to me like Obama got a higher vote there than I would have thought possible, while, on balance, urban NOVA voted less blue that I thought they were going to.
Meanwhile, as to Alaska, if these blogistas are quoting the authorized numbers correctly, then the suggestion that 50,000 or so votes are weirdly missing seems very logical to me.
An article in the 8 Nov. Anchorage Daily News also said the size of Alaska’s turnout was puzzling, given that “the lead-in for the 2008 election was extraordinary.” The article begins:
Did a huge chunk of Alaska voters really stay home for what was likely the most exciting election in a generation?
That’s what turnout numbers are suggesting, though absentee ballots are still arriving in the mail and, if coming from overseas, have until Nov. 19 to straggle in.
The reported turnout has prompted commentary in the progressive blogosphere questioning the validity of the results. And Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore, who usually works with Democrats, said Friday that “something smells fishy,” though he said it was premature to suggest that the conduct of the election itself was suspect.
With 81,000 uncounted absentee and questioned ballots, some of which will be disqualified, the total vote cast so far is 305,281–8,311 fewer than the last presidential election of 2004, which saw the largest turnout in Alaska history.
As it stands now, the numbers for the most closely watched races are as follows:
Race Republican Democrat U.S. Senate Ted Stevens: 106,594 Mark Begich: 103,337 U.S. House Don Young: 114,043 Ethan Berkowitz: 97,104
Palling around with errorists
The kind of distortion, lying, and rumormongering that Palin now accuses reporters of is the very kind she was engaging in when she was McCain’s running mate. Now that the (Republican) party is over, she is expressing indignation and hurt. I have to admit that when I watch and listen to her, I feel sorry for her: sorry that she is not better equipped–intellectually and morally–to press her charges. If she had been against character assassination all along–that is, when it was being directed at others as well as herself–she would have some moral ground on which to attack the ethics of reporters.
A Letter from Alaska
John Luther Adams, an acquaintance in Alaska, sent me some weeks ago the letter that appears at this blog. I corresponded with him a bit about his letter, and he brought up the fact that Hawai‘i senator Dan Inouye was speaking in defense of Stevens at the trial. This made me feel ashamed and reminded me of Hawai‘i’s political ties to Alaska, including the support of both of our U.S. senators for drilling in the ANWR.
Here’s a bright note to follow that darkness. The election-day edition of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin had a picture of a memorial to Obama’s grandmother with a caption that stated, in part:
Though [Madelyn Payne] Dunham died two nights before the election, state elections officials say they will count her vote. Kevin Cronin, the state’s chief elections officer, said yesterday that state law requires absentee ballots cast by someone who dies before Election Day to be discarded, but only if Health Department certification of the death is received before the election. Dunham’s absentee ballot was received by the elections office on Oct. 27, Cronin said.
