Like clockwork, far-right Republican legislators are crying foul on the state’s election after the latest results show the repeal of Alaska’s open primary system will likely fail.
The accusations were leveled by extreme-right GOP Reps. Sarah Vance of Homer and Jamie Allard of Eagle River, shortly after a Monday update showed Ballot Measure 2’s lead had been eliminated and was now narrowly failing by fewer than 200 votes. Allard suggested the loss could be blamed on “illegal aliens” voting, and Vance said a 2020 data breach could be at fault.
Ballot Measure 2 seeks to repeal Alaska’s moderate-friendly open primaries and ranked-choice voting system. Conservatives have made this one of their top priorities, seeking a return to the semi-closed partisan primaries of the past that allowed a small group of primary voters to effectively pick representation in safe Republican districts.
While some 5,000 votes remain to be tallied on Wednesday (the final day for overseas ballots to arrive) and a likely automatic recount triggered by the narrow margin, Vance and Allard are already chalking up the possible loss to conspiracies without offering any evidence to support their claims.
That’s also despite the Alaska Division of Elections being led by a Trump-supporting director in Carol Beecher, who refused to say Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 election.
While the 15-day process of counting Alaska’s votes has been a target of election deniers, it’s a function of state and federal laws that allow overseas residents to cast ballots. That process is set to wrap up on Wednesday when the Division of Elections is set to complete ballot counting and conduct the ranked-choice voting tabulations.
“Alaska’s election process is unique because of our expansive geography, our various methods of voting, and our commitment to ensuring every voter’s voice is heard,” Lt. Gov Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican, said in a prepared statement released today, following Vance and Allard’s claims. “From urban centers to the most remote villages, we take the time required to receive, process, and count ballots securely and transparently.”
The accusations
Allard, who was kicked off the state Human Rights Council after she defended Nazi references in state-issued license plates, took to X to claim that “illegal aliens in Alaska” could be responsible for the passage of a ballot measure raising the minimum wage and the failure of another to repeal open primaries.
“Alaska has approximately 60k non-citizens (foreign born) and 5-10k illegal aliens in Alaska,” she wrote. “How many do you think registered and/or voted illegally in our elections in 2024? Should we do an audit and investigate? Do you think these individuals could have impacted our state races and Ballot Measures 1 and 2?”
While Ballot Measure 2 is currently failing by 192 votes, Ballot Measure 1 — which raises the minimum wage and guarantees paid sick leave for most workers — passed with a nearly 40,000-vote margin. The minimum wage measure’s margin is actually quite a bit smaller than when voters approved the last minimum wage hike a decade ago.
Meanwhile, Homer Rep. Vance—who drew headlines after she derailed a hearing on tribal justice because it didn’t include white women — expressed her dissatisfaction with the results by pushing an op-ed claiming Alaska has an “election integrity crisis” and insisted that the certification of the state’s election be delayed.
Her claim isn’t fixated on immigrants but a 2020 breach that revealed personal data of about 113,000 Alaskans. At the time, the state said it didn’t affect the voting systems and “the purpose of the unlawful access was to spread propaganda and shake voter confidence — not to impact the election results.”
Still, the breach has done just that. It’s been a critical driver in election “reform” efforts that Vance and other conservative Republicans have pushed. Those priorities have, by and large, been aimed at making it harder to vote by hastening voter roll purges and ending automatic voter registration.
In her op-ed, Vance demanded a “comprehensive audit” of the 113,000 Alaskans to ensure their votes weren’t somehow meddled. Exactly how those bad actors would have used the information to change votes is never explained.
“How can we trust the outcome of any election in Alaska if we don’t address the potential for outside influence and data manipulation?” she wrote. “If our data can be accessed and misused, how can we be sure that our votes are genuinely our own? Without answers, we risk compromising the very foundation of our democratic process.”
Neither explained why the manipulation would have yielded a narrow failure for Ballot Measure 2 while leaving U.S. Democratic Rep. Mary Pelolta trailing well behind Republican challenger Nick Begich.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
