Alaska governor vetoes major election reform bill, citing 'burdens'
2d 23h ago by lemmy.world/u/TheTimeKnife in politics from thehill.com
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) vetoed a major bipartisan election reform bill Thursday, citing the “operational burdens” that would come with implementing the changes so close to November’s elections. “Taken as a whole, the bill would impose significant operational burdens on the administration of Alaska’s elections during an election year in which several statewide contests will occur,” Dunleavy wrote in a letter to the Alaska House Speaker and state Senate president explaining his veto. The Republican governor said the state government’s Division of Elections warned the changes “would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement securely and reliably in advance of the 2026 elections.” Alaska is holding elections this year for governor, lieutenant governor, Congress and the state Legislature. “Alaskans need an election process that is simple, understandable, secure, and implemented with sufficient time for the Division to make necessary changes,” Dunleavy continued in his statement. The bill — the result of a decadelong bipartisan effort — would allow voters to track their ballots to ensure they’ve been received and counted. Voters would then be allowed to correct minor errors that otherwise could result in their ballots being rejected.
ha, what a piece of shit. even his own party is going to override this. i wonder if his own election was won on something these new rules would mitigate.
“Governor Dunleavy has said, by his veto, that Alaska’s elections are secure enough,” he said in a statement to the local outlet. “Unfortunately, they are not, and even his supporters confirm that.”
“Our voter rolls stood at 114% of the voting-age population in 2022. Ballots are being rejected over technical errors. Tampering with a voting machine is not explicitly a crime under current law. This bill addressed every one of those concerns. The Governor had every reason to sign it.”
Probably something like this.
Our voter rolls stood at 114% of the voting-age population in 2022.
I have read that sentence a half dozen times and still can't make sense of it.
I believe it means that they have more people registered to vote in Alaska than they have people who are even old enough to vote. This can happen due to people leaving the state or dying and not being removed from the voter rolls, and may also have duplicate entry issues (e.g. maybe someone is still registered under an old name). It represents a data clean-up issue, but isn't really a huge deal unless you're actually seeing more people voting than there should be. I'd generally prefer voter rolls that take too long to clean up deprecated data than those which are overly aggressive in expunging data and end up catching eligible registered voters in the process, though.
It means they counted more votes than there are people who could have possibly voted. If Alaska had a voting-eligible population of 100, then they counted 114 votes. Which means there was significant voter fraud.
No. Voter roll meaning number of registered voters, not votes cast and counted.
Gee I wonder why a Republican would kill a bill that's actually meant to help secure elections and ensure each citizen gets their rightful vote counted.
Gee I wonder.
Too close to the election! Meanwhile lousiana is like... Fuck that, we're shutting down the election that's already having early voting because fuck you.
Fascism is a much bigger burden than anything he can list.