Rejected and Out of Touch: “Big Lie” Believer Attempts to Reignite Effort to Revoke Vote by Mail
Shortly after Mayor Bronson's narrow victory in last year's mayoral runoff election — a victory secured with help from outside consulting firm Axiom Strategies and through the obfuscation of campaign disclosures — the far-right began telegraphing an organized effort that they hoped would bring about an end to Anchorage's vote by mail system.
Now, what one must understand is that former (and I say "former" primarily to the Qanon cultists known to frequent TBA) President Donald Trump, a grossly unpopular individual, began his election fraud disinformation campaign aimed at sowing doubt about the integrity of our elections well before one vote was ever cast in 2020. Trump did this not because voting by mail was unsafe or unreliable, but because knowing a worm could defeat him, he wanted to set the stage for his illegal, unconstitutional attempt to cling to power.
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
Election fraud lies and related conspiracy theories trickled across the country, resonating with those who continue to treat Trump like a cult leader. His presidency, you may recall, ended in a violent and deadly coup attempt at the hands of his very own supporters.
Over the past year and a half, I've written extensively about Save Anchorage, a group working in lockstep with Jamie Allard and whose members have parroted Trump's election fraud conspiracy theories. Members of the group have asserted that the Municipality's dominion systems, which have been in use for general election management since at least 2007, had suddenly become fraudulent and are no longer to be trusted.
Perhaps unknown to the broader public is Save Anchorage, the right-wing media, and Allard has also worked to sow doubt about the integrity of Anchorage Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones, who has served as Anchorage Municipal Clerk since 2012.
In November 2020, Jamie Allard sent an email to Jones seeking answers to several questions she had about "Dominion Voting Machines." You can read Jones' response to Allard here.
Allard then claimed in a Facebook comment last year that the corruption of mail-in ballots was real and asserted the Municipality's rules governing the vote-by-mail system were "alarming." Allard's bizarre comments were never reported on and left to fester like an open infected wound.
The absurdly partisan effort to make the Municipal Clerk an elected position, as proposed by Mayor Bronson, began as far back as August 24, 2020, when posts and comments shared to Save Anchorage accused Jones of dragging her heels on the Zaletel recall. As months passed, the group and associated activists worked on painting the dedicated public servant as a pawn of the Assembly. By the end of last year's mayoral runoff election, we learned of the unprecedented level of harassment directed at Jones, which included a call for election officials to be executed.
A little over a month after last year's mayoral runoff election, civic activist Russell Biggs — the owner of the Reclaim Midtown Facebook page and the Arctic Liberation Coalition, who also serves as a Save Anchorage administrator, and who failed twice to recall progressive members of the Anchorage Assembly — issued a rallying cry seeking to entice individuals to volunteer for an effort aimed at dismantling and revoking Anchorage's vote by mail system.
Last night on her official/not official Facebook page, Allard attempted to reignite interest in the maligned effort that, if successful, would marginalize and disenfranchise voters. Allard's post, of course, drew the attention of those who commented that Dominion voting machines were "rigged" and those who called for the rejection of elections with "fake mail in votes."
In a strange bit of irony, should the question of revoking the city's current voting system ever make it onto a ballot, the Municipality's current vote-by-mail system would handle those ballots. This means that when voters overwhelmingly defeat any such measure, proponents of dismantling the system will continue to grouse that the whole process is rigged.
According to the Clerk's office, as of April 11, 64.7% of those who voted in this year's Municipal Election did so by secure drop box — a stark contrast to the 5.3% of those who voted in person.
