Remember standardized testing when you were a kid? You’d fill in those ovals with that Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 until your eyes bugged out. Schools provided “smart snacks” of carrots and apples on testing days. I’m sure you’re good, honest folks, but what a horrible position to put you in. “Oh, I knew this answer, I just forgot.” That’s basically what Anchorage Assembly chair Ernie Hall and the “election commission” appointed by Mayor Dan Sullivan, did this week. They graded their own performance on a debacle of an election and said, “There’s nothing to see, nothing wrong, and we don’t want anyone else to grade us either!”
Ernie Hall is pushing for certification of one of the most troubled elections in recent history. Under his leadership, city officials are running out the clock and attempting to wear down the masses. The deputy clerk, Jacqueline Duke, has become the Katherine Harris of Anchorage. Her direction to poll workers to “ignore integrity seals” on the Diebold voting machine memory cards is egregious. What’s the point of integrity in an election when you direct workers to ignore it? Duke, a former Chili’s employee, is the “programmer” of those machines since the elimination of the election supervisor several years ago.
The same machines Alaska uses were decertified by California. California officials sued the manufacturer for selling them defective and easy-to-hack software. Hey, did we get ours on eBay? Our election commissioner, Gwen Matthews, told the Assembly: “Those are amazing machines — utterly amazing. It is impossible for them to go haywire. They are highly accurate. I think that I could almost say that they’re totally accurate. I’ve never found a discrepancy.” Apparently she hasn’t ever Googled the machines to which we entrust our elections.
Full Article: City grading itself in integrity of election: Shannyn Moore | Alaska news at adn.com.