In a continuing trend since Donald Trump questioned the 2020 presidential election results, local election observers for conservative Anchorage Assembly candidates filed a failed challenge and an ongoing contest of the April 2023 Municipality of Anchorage election. At the center of both is Sami Graham, a failed Anchorage School Board candidate and former chief of staff to Mayor Dave Bronson.
Graham, who served as Bronson’s chief of staff from August 2021 to January 2022, filed an election challenge on April 11 that hinges on knowledge of an internal policy change made just hours before by Bronson’s information technology director, which suggested coordination between the challengers and the administration. The details of the challenge, which was rejected by the city’s Election Commission on April 20, were first reported by the Anchorage Daily News.
A month later, her husband, Bruce Graham, and nine other voters filed an election contest saying that some voters were disenfranchised because they didn’t get a reminder postcard. Municipal code does not require that voters receive a reminder to vote. Those that didn’t receive the mailed postcard include voters with undeliverable addresses and people who have not voted in the past four years.
In a written response to the most recent challenge, Municipal Election Clerk Jamie Heinz argued the Assembly should reject the challenge, as the complainants showed no grounds for an elections contest. At Tuesday’s meeting, after a spirited discussion, the Assembly voted 9-3 not to hear the election contest. To continue the contest the 10 voters who filed it will have to appeal to the courts.
The complaints keep up the trend started by Trump and since pushed by other Republicans who blame election losses on fraud instead of inferior candidates and campaign messaging.
During his successful 2021 campaign, Bronson joined the chorus by questioning aspects of the municipality’s vote-by-mail election process. After the Assembly majority retained enough members in the 2022 municipal election to continue overriding mayoral vetoes, Bronson called for an independent audit of the city’s election technology.
Elsewhere in Alaska, far-right candidate Kelly Tshibaka, who lost her bid for U.S. Senate against moderate Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski, asked for donations from outside groups to fight the outcome, even before the results were final. Sarah Palin, who twice lost to Democrat Mary Peltola in 2022, has routinely alleged that the elections were potentially fraught with fraud and that ranked-choice voting is a “newfangled, cockamamie system.”
The April election determined the balance of power in city government for the remainder of Bronson’s first term. The Assembly’s progressive-to-moderate super-majority has routinely been a check on the administration, withholding funds for things like Bronson’s proposed Tudor-Elmore navigation center and mass homeless shelter, which he has never produced a long-term operating plan or detailed estimate for. Nearly all of the Assembly races were projected to be closely contested, with conservatives potentially picking up several seats and forming a body much more in line with the mayor’s agenda. Ultimately, progressives won all races in the Anchorage Bowl, many by 10 points or more.
Bruce Graham’s election contest was signed by 10 voters and submitted May 4. Two of the signers, John Henry and Daniel Smith, also signed on to the April complaint alongside Sami Graham.
As a regular contributor to the right-wing website Must Read Alaska, Smith routinely reinforces Bronson’s narrative that the Anchorage Assembly has taken power from the executive branch and is the reason Bronson hasn’t been able to implement his policy agenda.
Along with Bruce Graham and Smith, other notable signers to the election challenge include:
- Cecilia Donelson, a donor to Bronson’s campaign who he attempted to appoint to the Election Commission. She was denied confirmation by the Assembly.
- Carolyn Overstreet, a donor to Bronson’s campaign and Alaskans for Honest Elections, an anti-rank-choice-voting organization.
- Brenda Hastie, an election observer for Liz Vasquez’s failed 2022 Assembly who also filed a complaint last year against Assemblymember Christopher Constant for taking a few pictures in the election center, before signing on to this one in May. Hastie has also written for the Alaska Family Council, an organization co-founded by Bronson that advocates for anti-abortion policies, LGBTQ discrimination and “religious liberties.”
- John Cunningham, a Republican who ran for State Senate and lost to incumbent Bill Wielechowski.
- Irene Quednow, a frequent testifier in opposition to the Assembly majority at Anchorage Assembly meetings.
Additional signers include Nicole Cupp, Erik Van Elburg and Rebecca Sunde.
Joe Miller, a lawyer and perennial far-right U.S. Senate candidate, is representing the 10 petitioners and filed a response on Tuesday stating that fewer ballots were sent to registered voters than in previous elections. In Heinz’s original response, it is explained that voters who did not receive a ballot package have the option of requesting a replacement ballot, or voting at the election center on one of the nine days it was open for in-person voting. Voters were also given the opportunity to receive a special needs ballot on or before election day.
Miller’s response further states: “It is a matter of record that only several hundred votes separated candidates in several assembly races, and other candidates were separated by only a few dozen votes.” The closest Assembly race was decided by 819 votes, while the second-closest by 903. Most other races were separated by thousands of votes.
Bruce Graham’s election contest follows on the heels of municipal ombudsman Darrel Hess’ investigation into the April challenge by Sami Graham, Henry and Smith.
On April 11, Bronson’s IT director, Marc Dahl, changed an internal policy to require that IT staff authorize or be present when staff use thumb drives in Municipality of Anchorage (MOA) computers. Election center computers are not connected to the internet for security purposes, so elections staff use thumb drives to transfer information, such as voter databases and election results, between Dominion Voting Systems election equipment and MOA computers.
Elections staff are trained by the IT department and use special encrypted thumb drives supplied by IT. Nationally, Dominion has been at the center of right-wing efforts to cast doubt on elections whose outcomes have been unfavorable to right-wing candidates, including former President Donald Trump. Dominion recently settled a defamation case against Fox News for $787 million.
None of the complainants are employed by the Municipality but they filed the complaint using the same language that had been inserted into municipal policy by Dahl only a few hours earlier. Dahl, one of only four remaining original Bronson appointees, previously attracted scrutiny for his role in using the municipal website to influence the outcome of the recall election targeting Assembly member Meg Zaletel. Bronson’s administration has seen a mass exodus of employees, with several outgoing employees, including former municipal manager Amy Demboski, alleging that they have been asked to do unethical things by Bronson and his administration.
According to the ADN report, security camera footage showed Dahl and Henry meeting and leaving the elections center together the next day. Graham, Henry and Smith would not normally have access to internal municipal policies such as the one they quoted in the complaint and the new policy had not gone through the proper process to be enforceable.
The complainants were acting as elections observers for Assembly candidate John Trueblood, who was running as part of a slate of seven conservative candidates supported by Bronson. All but one were down in the results at the time the complaint was made, and all but one ultimately lost their races.
Assembly member Anna Brawley said the time spent on “manufactured controversy over supposed election issues” takes away from dealing with real issues.
“It also conveniently distracts from the real issue of the administration’s ongoing legal troubles and inability to move their stated priorities forward,” Brawley said.“I want to see the results of the investigation, because this is a serious and troubling story. It’s unclear how a challenge based on an unapproved, two-hour old policy will hold water.”
