Yesterday, I announced my partnership with Phil Izon and Petition Magician via e-mail (if you’re getting this article, you would have received that e-mail yesterday afternoon in the United States). Phil was the petition sponsor for last year’s Alaskan effort to repeal the scourge of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Unfortunately, the effort wound up falling just short, losing by 743 ballots (0.24%) out of 321,203 tabulated.

This result, which is instrumental for pushing politicians like Mary Peltola or Lisa Murkowski into office, occurred despite Trump carrying the state by 13.1% with a much-improved performance over 2020’s cheat fest. In my Alaska 2024 recap, here’s what I had to say about Harris’s surprising areas of support:

· In Alaska, Harris lagged Biden by 13,752 ballots, while Trump also lagged his 2020 totals. Using census area estimates, Harris dropped over 6,000 ballots in Anchorage, 1,000 in Fairbanks North Star, and fewer than 1,000 in Juneau and Kenai Peninsula. Incredibly, she gained almost 500 ballots over Biden’s suspiciously high 2020 count in Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough, which is the conservative heart of Alaska and not likely to be fertile for Democrat gains if they are going backward in more suitable locations.

· Harris also piled up surprisingly high ballot counts in small census areas, such as Yakutat, Skagway, Ketchikan Gateway, and Denali, which (if ballots are being harvested up and cast) could have given the requisite 664 ballot margin needed to retain Ranked Choice Voting and defeat Ballot Measure 2.

It is interesting to me that Harris found herself unable to gain over Biden’s 2020 tallies in the largest census areas, but despite Trump’s notable gains with Native Alaskan voters in the southeast, she managed to eclipse Biden in places like Yakutat and Skagway, as if a sudden voter roll boom had occurred in areas with otherwise declining populations.

Total Votes Per Presidential Election – Yakutat

2012 306

2016 346

2020 317

2024 471

Nope, that doesn’t fit the pattern, especially with both Trump and Harris lagging 2020 presidential totals statewide. So, apart from Automatic Voter Registration, done through the states Permanent Fund Dividend (oil money), what else could be boosting these rolls?

Yesterday, amid all the news about stock market panic, a little corruption-related news broke from the Last Frontier:

Most of Whittier’s population (272 as of the 2020 census) live in the Begich Towers condominiums, and it appears there is a ring focused on getting residents populated dense living areas registered to vote, at all costs, leading to charges against 10 residents. The only issue here is that the 10 people receiving charges for voter misconduct are not eligible to vote, but went through the process of getting registered, presumably in time for the 2024 election. These 10 people, including one who has already faced election related charges, are American Samoans. Unlike Puerto Ricans or Virgin Islanders, they are American nationals, but not American citizens. They certainly knew this, but went ahead with the process anyway (Tupe Smith, the woman who has already faced charges, absolutely knew this).

The questions that are going unasked then, are “who is incentivizing ineligible voters to register, and which organizations are traveling to population-dense living projects or remote villages to stuff voter registrations, assign mail ballot requests, and ensure all votes are harvested from places like Yakutat (which Harris won by 19.5%, despite Trump having 19 more votes than Joe Biden had ballots in 2020). These 10 voters, if they all had cast a ballot, represent .003% of all votes cast in the RCV repeal contest. Imagine they had split 6 to 4 in favor of retaining RCV, netting a +2 margin for those wishing to keep Murkowski’s system intact. That means only 3,720 bogus registrations statewide, all fed a mail ballot and maintaining a 60-40% split in favoring of retaining RCV, could have provided a margin of 743 ballots, which was certified.

I’m not saying this is exactly how things played out, but the foundation of election corruption is the corruption of the voter roll, and while Automatic Voter Registration helps swell these rolls with entries that are already ineligible or otherwise not likely to vote, an unseen hand is behind illegally registering non-citizens to vote, or ensuring ballots are harvested up and cast in areas not inclined to make use of in-person voting options that Alaskan politicians ensure are available so no one gets called racist.

Remember, just because things seem small at face value – it’s what we don’t see that should concern us about how easy it is to corrupt our elections.

Refer a friend

Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.