Alaska’s Election Rumored To Be Stolen

November 7, 2008

Mac Zilber

Initially, there weren’t any allegations of voter fraud in this election because the Democrats had won by too much to want to press charges and the Republicans enjoyed best case scenario results in the house and senate, and didn’t want to ruin a good thing (before you puzzle over this sentence, the Republicans lost fewer seats in the house and senate than expected, even though they still lost in a wave). Despite both parties getting what they wanted, there certainly was some questionable activity with the voting up in Alaska.

If you remember my previous article about polling accuracy, I noted that Alaska was the one state with major polling inaccuracy across the board, with all three Republicans who were running statewide finishing with about 12-14% more support than the polls would indicate. This alone, however, would not be nearly sufficient evidence, but there was more questionable activity that does raise one’s suspicion.

Down in the other 49 states, the election yielded the highest voter turnout in history, with somewhere from 125-130 million people showing up to vote nationwide. In Alaska, one would have assumed the same thing would happen. Despite the governor of Alaska being on the ticket, despite Alaska having more attention paid to it in this election than in any election since 1960, despite a record number of people voting early, and despite the tens of thousands of new registered voters in this election, Alaska reported its lowest voter turnout since they started tracking voter turnout numbers. By all accounts, the turnout in Alaska should have risen from 2004’s turnout, but instead it fell 13%. Where did all those missing votes go?

One argument that could be made is that Alaskans knew that the election was over, and didn’t turn out to vote because of that. Afterall, they have the latest time zone. The problem with that line of reasoning is that Ohio wasn’t called until 5:00 Alaskan time, and the election wasn’t called until 7:00 Alaskan time. How many people would have the knowledge of the electoral system to say “Ohio was called, that means the election is over and my vote doesn’t matter” but would lack the knowledge of the electoral system to say “McCain is going to win Alaska anyway, what’s the point in voting?” No, people weren’t voting in Alaska because they thought they could influence the presidential race, they were voting because they wanted to vote in the congressional races and/or vote for Sarah Palin for Vice President. None of those factors would have changed due to the presidential race being called, so that argument falls short.

The next argument to be made is that there was some sort of “convicted felon effect” in which voters didn’t want to tell pollsters that they were voting for Ted Stevens and Don Young because such a vote would be embarrassing. This would explain why the two of them over-performed in the polls, but it would not explain why John McCain over-performed in Alaska by almost the same amount.

The third argument, and the only “above-board” one that carries some weight to it is that the Democrats simply became complacent. They decided that Stevens and Young were going to lose and Obama was going to lose, and so they didn’t need to show up, thus ensuring Stevens and Young’s victory. The thing that strikes me as fishy about this explanation is the fact that there were plenty of states with a similar dynamic (no close races) that still enjoyed record voter turnouts.

Which brings me to the theory that has been bouncing around the internet which is that the election in Alaska was stolen. The corrupt Republican infrastructure in Alaska controls the election machinery, and the results were off-the-wall nonsensical. Interestingly, if you give those tens of thousands of missing votes to Democratic senate candidate Mark Beigich, he wins by almost an identical margin to what he was polling at before the election. The question you are logically asking now is “why would they put so much time and effort into getting Ted Stevens re-elected when he’s going to get kicked out of the senate anyway?”

The reason is that Alaskans elect their incumbents at an absurdly high rate. Ted Stevens has been in office for 40 years, Don Young has been in his office for 35 years, and Frank Murkowski was in office for 25 years. If Mark Begich had won his election, we might have been hearing about senator Begich for the next thirty years. The other reason is more near-term - Stevens’ seat was the seat that could have brought the Democrats to a 60-seat super-majority in the senate. They were evidently trying to preserve a Republican senate seat for somebody, anybody, even if he was a 7-time convicted felon.

An interesting result of this election is that there is going to be an empty seat in Alaska by 2010, as Stevens is almost surely going to get booted from the senate. Who might run to keep this seat in Republican hands? None other than Sarah Palin. Palin probably knows that she doesn’t have the knowledge base to run for president in 2012, and she knows she isn’t going to learn about the issues in the statehouse. Thus, she may have plans to go to Washington, where she has to learn the issues, and where she can beef up her resumé. Do I think it will get her in the white house? No. But I wouldn’t be shocked if she tried the run for senate anyway, as that would give her more power over the national Republican party.

Or she could just fade off into the past like Dan Quayle.

UPDATE: Nate Silver believes that Begich may win this race after all. There are still many absentee ballots and early votes to be counted, and Begich is down by only 3,000 votes. This wouldn’t necessarily prove that there wasn’t any fraud, but it would definitely make it a lot less likely.

One Response

1. 2:17 PM on November 10th, 2008Kathy:

   Interesting…

   Do you know if it’s as possible to commit voter fraud with the absentee ballots and early votes as it is with election-day votes?

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