What Do I Know?

The Man Of Noble Mind . .

2026-11-01T15:15:27.377-09:00

If you haven't already voted, consider this bit of wisdom. from the Analects of Confucius, Book XII:

XVI. The Master said: 'The man of noble mind seeks to achieve the good in others and not their evil. The little-minded man is the reverse of this.'

[From Wikipedia:

The Analects, also known as the Sayings of Confucius, is an ancient Chinese philosophical text composed of sayings and ideas attributed to Confucius and his contemporaries, traditionally believed to have been compiled by his followers."]

Treefall, Absentee Ballot Review [UPDATED]

2026-10-30T20:33:17.071-08:00

Woke up to the sound of high winds - wasn't sure at first if it was winds or planes. But it was wind. And a spruce tree we'd planted 40+ years ago, toppled over and is resting on the corner of our neighbor's roof. The tree was on a hill, like the one that fell over last winter. So the downside roots have less to grip. Last year the tree fell into another tree which stopped it from falling further. When the top, that was leaning onto the other tree was cut off, the tree stayed standing at about a 50˚ angle. The tree man who came out to look today said he thought the tree today would have come down slowly.

Tuesday I was at the Division of Elections to observe the the DoE employees as they reviewed the incoming absentee ballots. Two workers sit at a small table. They get a plastic bin with ballots in it. They are sorted by date received and district. They get a slip of paper with info on it - district, date received, number of electronic ballots and mailed in ballots, total number, and sequence numbers. Another paper has a list of the voters with the information on the voter. Then they count the ballots to make sure the numbers are right. Next, they check the information the voter has put on the ballot against their list - name, address, id number, etc.

photo from ADN* - no phones
allowed when observing

I was there just half a day because there were too many observers, so I split the day with another observer. Half a day was plenty. The two workers I observed Tuesday were terrific. They welcomed me to the table and said they'd answer any question I had, but not to talk while they were counting ballots. They went through the ballots really fast. The bins had anywhere from half a dozen ballots to one with 324 ballots.

There were very few ballots that were flagged with problems. Two, from a married couple, had been written on the wrong envelopes. He was listed on her envelope and vice versa. The reviewers were able to get permission from a supervisor to accept those ballots. Another two people from the same address didn't have witnesses. They were rejected. Someone else had used a primary election envelope and that too was rejected. (I asked the next day if anyone had checked to see if the person had possibly used the correct ballot, but the wrong envelope. They assured me someone had checked.) Other voters had moved and were in new districts but used the old district ballots. So their choices for state offices (based on their district) would not count because they no longer lived in that district, but the statewide offices - Governor, US House and Senate and some or all of the judges (depending on which judicial districts they lived in) would count.

Wednesday, I observed a different pair of workers, but they were equally friendly and efficient. But this time they encouraged me to get a copy of the register they were reviewing. At first I was confused. When they read off the identifier number (drivers license, social security (last four digits ok), voter id, or date of birth I couldn't find them on my register. I asked and was told it wasn't on my copy - confidential information.

The first day, without my own register, I watched the envelopes carefully, Some had one forever stamp, some had two, others had no stamps. One had a stamped price from the post office. $1.11. That's more than a forever stamp. So I asked. Turns out, the post office will deliver them without stamps.

[There's been the sound of chain saws in the neighborhood most of the day, and just now it sounded closer. They're working on our tree now too.]

One of the things I realized was that the ballots had already been reviewed once. People had collected them, taken off the privacy cover, reviewed the information, marked some for rejection, and resealed them.

Let me explain that a bit more. I don't have a photo of back of the envelope because I didn't take a picture of ours and we had to leave our phones outside the room we were observing in.

[UPDATED Nov 1, 2026: I've talked to folks and found my memory faulty because they say the ballot, in the secrecy sleeve, is inside a sealed envelope before being put into the mailing envelope. While such a seal can be opened, it's much harder and probably not feasible to do in any number. So, my concern about a ballot being easily accessible, is much reduced. There is, though, still seems to be a step that is unobserved, which makes the show of having observers seem a bit odd.]

This is my drawing of the flap on the back of the envelope. The ballot is put inside the envelope and on the back, the voter writes their information and the witness signature. Then the flap is pulled down, the adhesive at the bottom inside the flap is licked and sealed, covering all the information.

The envelopes the people I observed worked with, had that privacy cover taken off [below] and it was resealed with the adhesive near the top of the flap. I did look at one such envelope that someone had [in the review room so I didn't have my phone to take a picture] because they hadn't voted yet. There was no perforation to help tear the flap off. And some of the ballots had been torn off roughly. Several the workers had to use tape to seal them better.

So why am I bringing this up? It seems to me that the whole point of allowing observers to watch the process of reviewing the ballots is to give confidence to the public that everything is on the up and up.

But apparently, there's a whole process where the flaps are taken off, and the envelopes are unsealed with the ballots inside, before they are resealed. And then the first round of checking the envelopes takes place. All that happens, as far as I can tell, without independent observers watching.

As I said, the people reviewing the ballots were absolutely professional AND welcoming to the observers (at least the four people I watched were to me.) But behind closed doors, there are people with envelopes that are NOT sealed for a while. It's a time when someone could slip out a ballot and add marks to the ranked choice ballots that would invalidate the ballot, at least for that race.

Wednesday, I came in at noon and they were out of ballots at 2:30pm so I got to go home early. Thursday's review was also cancelled and Friday was too. I'm not sure why.

[The tree was cut while I wrote this and is gone now. Cutting a tree takes less time than writing a blog post.]

*ADN = Anchorage Daily News

DOJ's Suit To Invalidate Alaska Election If Daniel S. Sullivan Doesn't Win [UPDATED] [UPDATED #2]

2026-10-23T12:55:57.797-08:00

UPDATE 10/27/26:

"State of Alaska says DOJ lawsuit over Senate race ‘has no legal basis’
Alaska Public Media | By Liz Ruskin
Published October 27, 2026 at 10:37 AM AKDT
Alaska Public Media
Alaska Elections Director Carol Beecher at a legislative hearing on July 22, 2026.
The State of Alaska is urging a federal judge to “immediately” dismiss a Trump administration lawsuit that could block certification of the U.S. Senate election if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan narrowly loses.
“Delaying certification of Alaska’s election results—but only if a particular candidate does not win—would interfere with state election administration and threaten election integrity,” the Alaska Department of Law, representing the Division of Elections and director Carol Beecher, wrote in response to the lawsuit.
The state said the lawsuit “has no legal basis” and would sow distrust in the vote. . ."

From: https://alaskapublic.org/news/politics/elections/2026-10-27/state-of-alaska-says-doj-lawsuit-over-senate-race-has-no-legal-basis

This was not something I expected! Very positive move. I guess they know it will only interfere with getting election results out in a timely manner.

Also, commenter Allen gives the link to find the court docket for Alaska court case that began last June. Thanks, Allen. This new case is a Federal, not State case.]]

UPDATE 10/24/26:

"Under representation from the ACLU of Alaska, the League of Women Voters of Alaska joined two individual Alaskan voters and Common Cause in a filing to intervene on the case on Friday, October 23. If granted, an intervention allows these additional interested parties to join the existing suit to present our unique perspectives. We also filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which would be considered by the court after the decision on the motion to intervene."] From an email from League of Women Voters

This is getting lots of national and international attention already and I don't need to repeat more than the basics. Here's the start of The Guardian article:

"Donald Trump said he ordered the justice department to file a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s US Senate results if the Republican incumbent loses, a move that voting rights experts called an “unprecedented intervention” by the federal government with control of Congress in the balance.
“I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters as he landed in Florida for a campaign rally on Friday."

Some others:

CNBC

Newsweek

(Several others had paywalls so I won't link them, but you get the picture. This is big news. The first actual salvo of the Trump administration's attempt to overturn elections that don't go his way.)

Basically DOJ has filed suit to invalidate the Alaska Senate election if the sitting Republican Senator Daniel S. Sullivan doesn't win the election on the grounds that another candidate, named Daniel J. Sullivan, will have confused voters into voting for him instead of Daniel S. Sullivan. (I'd note that I wasn't confused after I marked Daniel J. Sullivan as my second choice - my first choice was NOT Daniel S) (Because we have Ranked Choice Voting I can make a second and third choice when I vote. You can even make a fourth choice vote, but I haven't figured out how that would ever matter because one of the candidates would have a majority before it got that far.)

What I can provide are links to nine blog posts I wrote in June and July of this year, where this battle was already fought out in the Alaska Courts and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled the State could not throw Daniel J. Sullivan off the ballot.

I'd also note a couple of other points I didn't see much in the other coverage:

1. The GOP have pushed hard* to get Democrats to vote for Eric Hafner for US Representative instead of Independent Bill Hill. Hafner is a resident of a New York prison.

*"Pushed hard" = sending out millions of dollars worth of flyers and other advertising to push Hafner and other non viable candidates to take votes from leading Democratic candidates.

2. The Alaska Division of Elections initially chose to drop Daniel J. Sullivan on the grounds that he was trying to confuse the voters (not a legal criterion of keeping someone off the ballot). There is a good chance that the Republican led State and State Division of Elections won't challenge the DOJ lawsuit and simply invalidate the election. What happens then?

Here are the posts I did in June and July of this year, chronicling how the State tried to keep Daniel J. Sullivan off the ballot and how the Alaska Supreme Court rejected that move.

June 22, 2026 Senator Dan Sullivan Does Not Want To Run Against Dan Sullivan [UPDATE]

June 23, 2026 The Dan J Sullivan Removal From Ballot Hearing

June 25, 2026 Daniel J. Appeal Of Division Of Elections Decision Plays Out In Nearly Empty Court Room

June 26, 2026 It's Almost 7pm -I Can't Find The Sullivan Decision - [Update - His Name Goes Back On The Ballot]

June 28, 2026

Supreme Court Hearing On Daniel J. Sullivan v Alaska Division of Elections Appeal On Zoom Only

Monday, June 29, 2026 Alaska Division Of Elections v Daniel J. Sullivan At Supreme Court

Monday, June 29, 2026 Supreme Court Keeps Daniel J. Sullivan On The Ballot

Tuesday, June 30, 2026 Division of Election's Sample Ballot Leaves Off Daniel J's Party Affiliation

Tuesday, July 07, 2026 Silence [UPDATE: Ballots Printed And Overseas Ballots Sent]

I've already thrown out the flyers supporting Hafner, but I do have one that is in response to those flyers:

My sense is the Republicans are sure the Democrats have put up Daniel J. Sullivan to run for Senate to confuse voters, because that's what they would do. And are doing with other candidates. During the primaries they spent close to a million dollars promoting Outside (of Alaska) candidates like Hafner.

The Ruckus Room, No Kings, Voting

2026-10-20T14:18:46.876-08:00

Saturday was No Kings Day again. But in Anchorage the energy has been dispersed in many directions. I joined the car parade that StandUp Alaska organized. Cars with "Vote" messages all over paraded through Mountain View, Fairview, and Government Hill.

There was also a bicycle component.

Meanwhile the League of Women Voters had a Democracy Fair at the main library. Democrats had people going door to door to urge people to vote for their candidates. Others waved signs at a busy intersection

The car and bike paraders ended up at the Ruckus Room which I'd never heard of. It's in a closed dispensary that was renovated for over a year and now has some spaces for rent for community activities.

It's at 2612 Eagle - between Northern Lights and Fireweed.

I was impressed with this Tolkien vibe door, and the decor in general.

It's a clean and interesting space if you have relatively small events. There are even several very small rooms.

The owner and operator of the Ruckus Room is Shel Weitzman.

Blogger notes: This blog has been competing for my time with life. I feel the pressure of the Óle writing group for something new each week. And time seems to go by so fast. Maybe that's a facet of getting older - a year is a much smaller fraction of my life than it was 50 years ago. A week goes by like nothing So, I wanted to write about No Kings and also about the Ruckus Room because the space there is cool and people should know about it. No Kings gets plenty of coverage, but I had never heard of the Ruckus Room until Saturday. And Shel appears to be a warm and interesting person. I'm sure he's got a lot of interesting stories. He did, for example, mention that his teenage sons helped with the remodeling. And most posts take longer to write than it might appear. Especially when I add a video in.

My school volunteering has been limited this fall. Monday mornings at the Rilke Schule and we haven't worked out time yet at Tudor (with the teacher I've worked with before Lake Otis was dissolved.)

And I'm signed up to be a poll worker and also to be an observer when the Division of Elections goes through the absentee and then the questioned ballots. Which got me to drop off our absentee ballots on the first day - yesterday, October 19 - at the Division of Elections and then go see how the first day of voting was going at the Mid-town Mall (formerly the Sears Mall).

There was a long line!

The second picture was taken from the red star looking back to the entrance to the polling place, but also including the alcove that goes to an entrance to the mall and where the line looped and comes out back into the mall.

The third photo is also from about the red star in the first picture and looks at the alcove and back out at the line going off into the distance in the mall.

And there was about an inch of snow outside this morning - the first of the season!

And tomorrow and Thursday is the AFN (Alaska Federation of Natives) Convention.

Trump's Supposed To Be In Alaska Today [Updated]

2026-10-13T16:05:57.044-08:00

It's after 4pm. He was supposed to speak at 3. I can imagine them trying to get him to the arena and then to the stage. Kalshi doesn't seem to have bets on the time, but they do on the subjects:

Screen shot:

A lotta white faces waiting for him. YouTube is covering it:

[The video is still available after it was over. Trump starts about 2 hours 16 minutes.]

I don't think it will help Dan Sullivan. Not sure what's going to happen in the US House race. I'm guessing the incumbent Nick Begich is ahead. But there is a lot of campaign activity going on. Lots of Outside money flooding the airwaves and mailboxes with nasty lies about candidates.

There are also supposed to be protesters outside the arena in Wasilla. Here's a picture from folks protesting at Church and Parks Highway.

[UPDATE 6:25pm: Trump took the podium, about 4:35pm. He spoke for over 90 minutes. He seemed to be on task at the beginning - pushing voting for Dan Sullivan "not the fake Dan Sullivan" and Nick Begich. He also endorsed Bernadette Wilson for Governor and said the other two Republicans should drop out. He also told people to vote yes on Prop. 2 to get rid of ranked choice voting.

He told countless lies about how everything in the United States is twenty times better than in all of history because of Trump. He was typically derisive about Mary Peltola and Bill Hill. It was unclear how many people were in the arena because the camera was focused on the podium.

He also promised every voter $5000 if the House and Senate stay Republican. That would seem like a blatant bribe, but if Congress stays Republican he doesn't have to worry about that. If they change to Democratic, he needs to start worrying about being accountable.

He also raised some of the current GOP talking points about Democrats being Communists, about them being a threat of cutting school kids up to change their gender, and men in women's sports.

I find it a little ironic that he had two Black (what I assume were) Secret Service men, and that the music at the end was the gay anthem, YMCA. Though I guess that's a song Trump heard a lot in the 1970s when he was a regular at NY City disco clubs.]

Some Things Still Work: Ballot Arrived Today

2026-10-10T18:33:40.683-08:00

Despite all that's been written about how the post office is/might hold up mail-in ballots, today (10/9/26) our ballots arrived.

The US Senate race is showing in the picture. For those of you who don't have ranked choice voting, you can see what the RCV ballot looks like.

Yesterday (10/9/26) according to the Alaska Division of Elections website, the ballots were mailed.

One day!

If Trump's team isn't planning to delay ballots, they're at least doing a good job of getting Democrats to believe they will and to spend a lot of time getting ready to counter any such moves.

At least in our household's case, things worked well.

Anchorage Trails Making Biking Spectacular

2026-10-09T12:21:26.108-08:00

I'm close to my summer goal of 1600 kilometers (a bit over 1000 miles.) Last year I was able to start in March already. This year even in April the trails still had ice and snow. And then we took two weeks off to visit family and friends Outside.

But I'm at 1564km. The finish line is in sight. Anchorage bike trails are a big part of why I'm able to do this. Not only are they car free and go on for miles and miles within the city, but they are beautiful. So here are a few pictures from the last week.

This stop at Goose Lake offers a different view every time. It's also a spot where people feed ducks, so they often come over if someone stops here.

It had rained during the day, so this was an early evening ride.

This is the lake at the Waldron Park soccer fields, filled with geese. I can hear them arguing - "it's time to head south" but the procrastinators are ready to take off yet. This is on the Campbell Creek South trail, not far from the eastern entrance on 47th Avenue off of Lake Otis.

Another late afternoon at Goose Lake, a different view altogether. But the same spot as the first picture.

Thursday I had an 8:30 dental appointment which is on the way to the Campbell Creek South trail. This time I picked it up off of Tudor and through the neighborhood near Tudor Elementary. It was about 9:30, overcast and a bit mysterious. I'm generally on this trail in the afternoon. But the mood is always much nicer in the morning. I was trying to catch that mood and the creek that the trail follows.

It was only after I took the picture that I noticed I wasn't alone. To the left (of the picture) a young bull moose was resting. Another perk of these trails.

Since the trail goes along the creek, we cross bridges here and there. This one is near where the trail goes under a railroad bridge as we get close to Taku Lake.

Finally, here's a picture of the trail itself, just after going under C Street and over another bridge over the creek. This stretch of trail goes about eight miles without ever intersecting a street (except through tunnels under bridges). But there are houses and businesses around the trail everywhere. Much of the trail has enough buffer you don't see them. In other spots you do.

These trails keep my head healthy. There are a few more posts that show Campbell Creek and other Anchorage trails in different locations and seasons. You can find them in the labels section in the lower right hand column.

There Is No Such Thing As "The Government"

2026-10-04T23:28:19.545-08:00

People often complain about 'the Government" as though there were one big government. But the truth is, there are many governments. Not just in the world, but inside the United States. Beyond the Federal (national/USA) government, every State has a government and every city and town has a government, and on and on.

From the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:

"In the most recent Census of Governments, which was conducted in 2022, the Census Bureau counted 90,837 governments in the U.S. In addition to the federal government, the 50 state governments and the government of Washington, D.C., there were 3,031 county governments, 35,705 township and municipal governments, 12,546 independent school districts and 39,555 other special-purpose local governments."

We have governments to do the collective things we need to do, that the private sector won't, can't, or shouldn't do. And in a democracy, the people have a voice in who gets to run the governments. It can get messy, but ultimately, the people are in control

The idea that there are over 90,000 governments in the United States is not something that most USians seem to know. Instead they rail against "The Government" not even distinguishing between those who are politicians and those civil servants who actually keep the many governmental agencies running. Instead people, upset with whatever agency they think has done them wrong, generalize from the specific government agency to the "Government."

On the other hand, when someone is frustrated with Home Depot or Delta Airlines or ATT, they call out that specific company by name. They don't vilify "Business" or "Capitalism" in general.

All that's an intro to Michael Lewis' book Who Is Government? which is my bookclub's selection for this month.

He starts out talking about how the Obama administration had set up a transition team to brief the new administration after the election. Whether Trump or Clinton won, they had prepared documentation and presentations to bring the incoming administration up to speed as quickly as possible.

"A thousand or so Obama officials were waiting for them, along with briefings that had taken them six months to prepare. But then, days after the election, Trump simply fired the 500 or so people on his transition team. "Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves." he told a perplexed Chris Christie, who assembled the team.
Then he appointed Rick Perry as his secretary of energy. In his own presidential campaign, Perry had called for the Energy Department's elimination - and was forced, at his Senate confirmation hearings, to acknowledge that he'd had no real idea of what went on inside the Energy Department, but now that he'd spent a few days looking into it, he really did not want to eliminate it. At that moment, it became clear that none of these people, newly in charge of the United States government, had the faintest idea what it did. (The Energy Department, among its other critical functions, manages our nuclear weapons.) And they weren't alone! I didn't really have any clue what went on inside the department either. People capable of ruining panel discussions and dinner parties with their steady stream of opinions about American politics were totally flummoxed by the simplest questions about American government. Questions like: What do all those civil servants do all day inside the Agriculture Department? (They preserve rural America from extinction, among other things.)"

So Lewis decided to take advantage of the Obama transition team to find out and spent time at the Energy Department and the Commerce Department learning, as a journalist, about what they did and interviewing employees about their jobs. He eventually discovered an organization that gave awards to outstanding Federal Employees.

The book highlights eight of those remarkable employees. Two of the chapters are written by Lewis and the other six by different authors.

The stories will take most people by surprise. The two by Lewis are so well written, and so interesting, that I encourage people to find this book and read it. It will give you an entirely new sense of what government does.

Of course, I acknowledge that not all Federal employees are as brilliant and dedicated as the eight in the book. But few resemble the stereotype of lazy wasteful employees either.

In the 1980-81 school year I had a Fellowship at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.) My boss at Oceanic and Atmospheric Services, set up a series of meetings for me with the heads of the key agencies he coordinated. I got picked up by a car and driven to meet with the Director of the Weather Service, for example, and got briefed on all they did. So I can understand how Lewis felt taking in all this information.

My unit was made up of men (mostly) who were natural scientists - with advanced degrees in meteorology, oceanography, and such subjects. I did ask my boss why he'd hired me - a social scientist and not a natural scientist. His answer, "Because you're a social scientist."

In my unit, they were all 20 to 30 years older than I was. And I learned a lot from them. A key lesson was about knowledge networks. These men had served in NOAA for many years and in many parts of the United States. (I wasn't the only one who had lived in Alaska.). And what they brought to policy making was both personal expertise but also a network of people around the US who worked for NOAA. People they had worked with at some point in their careers. People they could call and immediately find out what was going on at any point.

So, do find a copy of this book. It's very readable and inspiring. And also somewhat depressing knowing that some of these agencies have been gutted by the Trump Administration. But you'll have ammunition for when you talk to or write your members of Congress - both House members and Senate members.

If you read this book, you'll meet a man who spent over a decade figuring out how to lower the death rate of coal miners by making roof collapses far less likely; the man in charge of National Cemeteries; a woman who seeks out signs of life beyond our universe; and another woman who specializes in finding cures for raw diseases.

Traveling Pics

2026-10-01T19:33:40.347-08:00

We're on a fairly last minute trip to celebrate a birthday with family and friends.

We left a cloudy Anchorage a week or so ago, but the sun was there.

A change of planes in Seattle and a view of Rainier as we head east. Our flight left Anchorage late and there was some question about whether we'd catch the next flight. But it was late too.

I'm guessing this was over Montana. I'm always amazed at how much "empty" land there is when you fly over the US.

As the Anchorage Assembly decries the lack of buildable land in town, we passed over miles and miles of such property. How big do we want Anchorage to be? Big enough that it is indistinguishable from cities in the Lower 48?

So this was in Chicago. Oak Park to be precise. Some of you will know why I took this picture, but I imagine most won't. If you look closely, this bike has a generator to power the battery for the lights. I had one of those on my very first bike. When you want the light to work, you let the top of the generator lean against the tire, and as the tire turns, it generates electricity.

Here we are in Chicago - picture from the transit train.

And we transferred to the subway downtown.

Which became the 'el' 9elevated) soon and we even passed practically through Wriggly Field during a Cubs game.

It took a bit to figure out the system, but by our second day we were getting around pretty well. Until the second to the last station, where the train stopped but didn't start again. There was an announcement that there was a person on the tracks ahead. That was about a 30 minute delay.

And here's Lake Michigan. I've been reading Halldór Laxness' Independent People. This picture of Lake Michigan reminds of me of the passage when the girl Asta Sollilja is leaving her home in rural Iceland for the first time. She marvels at the changing landscapes. But then they reach a stretch that is more desolate and unchanging.

"The chill isolation of the moorland plateau reigned over these two wayfarers and they were silent. The dreary monotony of the landscape dulled their senses; she began to feel hungry and no longer looked for or delighted in the things that were strange to her.
Again and again the girl waited for the next hilltop to refresh the eye with some variation, some new prospect, but always it was the same endless repetition except that the gleaming waters of the lake had long since been left in the rear. She had lost all her anticipation and had long grown tired of expecting anything in particular when the road, turning suddenly, dipped downward along the side of a deep ravine with river at the bottom. And when she looked eastward along the gap, expecting to see another hill in front of her, lo and behold, there was nothing to see; it was as if the world came to a sudden stop before her eyes and the depth of the skies took its place, though with a different shade of blue. Or was it that the sky was supported out on the horizon there by a gleaming wall of blue-green glass? This strange blue color seemed to embrace all the mysteries of distance, and she stood for a moment overwhelmed by the prospect of such infinity. It was as if she had come to the edge of the world.
"Father," she said in a perplexed and hesitating voice, "where are we?"
"We've crossed the heath," he replied. "That's the ocean."

Lake Michigan is not an ocean, but it does extend out into the horizon like an ocean. Can you see the blue green glass supporting the sky?

Responding to Anon on Ranked Choice Voting

2026-09-24T20:33:04.498-08:00

Anonymous commented on a previous post about Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). They raised common issues about RCV. I decided it was easier, if I responded in a new post. This is it.

To make it as clear as possible for the reader to distinguish between us, my comments are in BLUE and the commenter's comments are RED

"These are things to consider when you are waxing poetic about RCV:"

From US Dictionary:

"The idiom "waxing poetic" describes the action of speaking or writing in an increasingly enthusiastic or eloquent manner. Often, this phrase is used when someone starts using a more florid or poetic language than might be expected or necessary."

This was a pretty fact based blog post. Not particularly enthusiastic for ranked choice nor particularly florid. I did speak positively about open primaries, saying they led to bi-partisan majorities in the legislature. The basic tone is a fairly muted support of RCV as in this quote:

"There is no perfect system. Whatever system you have, people figure out ways to game the system. Ideally, we will not get rid of Ranked Choice Voting in November and we can learn how to make it work."

"Ballot Exhaustion" & Disenfranchisement: In RCV, if all the candidates you ranked are eliminated in early rounds, your ballot is marked as "exhausted" and discarded before the final tally. Consequently, the winner often claims a "majority" only of the remaining active ballots, not a true majority of all voters who cast a ballot.

You don't necessarily get a majority in any non-RCV election if it's a three or four way race, say if there is a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent on the ballot. In most elections, the one with the most votes - not a necessarily a majority - wins. The Anchorage Municipal election for mayor partially addresses this by requiring a runoff if no one gets at least 45% of the vote.

At least in RCV you get to pick a second and third choice - meaning if your first choice candidate doesn't win, you get a chance to vote for a second choice candidate. That doesn't happen in the old system. In that system, if your first choice doesn't win, your vote is essentially exhausted too.

⁠The "Center-Squeeze" & Non-Monotonicity*: RCV can produce bizarre mathematical anomalies where gaining support can cause a candidate to lose, or losing support can cause them to win. A moderate candidate who is the acceptable second choice for almost everyone can get eliminated in the first round simply because they lacked enough intense first-place votes, leaving two polarizing extremes.

First, I agree, that it's possible for someone to be everyone's second choice, but they wouldn't get onto the general election ballot because they didn't get enough first place votes. Probably not likely, but possible. But with closed primaries, that candidate probably wouldn't make it to the general election. If you had three candidates on the general ballot under the old system, I don't know that the hypothetical moderate would win either and we wouldn't ever know they were everyone's second choice.

Complexity & Higher Error Rates: Ranking multiple candidates increases the cognitive load on voters and leads to higher rates of spoiled ballots (e.g., unintentionally ranking two candidates first or skipping ranks). This complexity disproportionately impacts older voters, non-native English speakers, and lower-income communities.

I was a poll worker at two elections that were RCV. My station was the scanner, where the voters put their ballots into the voting machine. The machines spit out ballots that are marked incorrectly - for example, two candidates are marked as second choice. The voter gets to have a new ballot and vote again. The old ballot is turned in, torn up, and put into a destroyed ballot envelope. All in front of the voter. That didn't happen very often. But I do suspect that some people's brains are wired so that an RCV ballot is harder for them to figure out. But my experience is that it was a very small percent of voters. Voters made mistakes under the old system too.

It would be an interesting study to be at a scanner and try to find common factors among people whose ballot is rejected because they marked the RCV ballot incorrectly. It would also be tricky to do because of the confidentiality of elections and avoiding intimidating voters.

Delayed Election Results: Because all ballots must be centralized and fully processed before any elimination round can occur, RCV slows down the reporting process. Late-arriving mail-in or military ballots can delay final results for days or weeks, which erodes public trust in election integrity.

It does take longer to tally votes if no candidate gets a majority in the first round. But many races only have two candidates in the general election. The problem, as I understand it, lies with the fact that for the second round, you have to wait for all the absentee ballots to arrive before tabulating the second round percentages. But that is also a problem with regular voting that is close.

For this you could do a study to see how many close votes are delayed until all the absentee votes are in for an RCV election and a regular election. In Alaska you could compare the primary to the general, though we probably get more candidates in the primary than normal because of the open primaries. Having a president who constantly tells the world that the elections are rigged, does a lot more harm to public confidence than a few dragged out elections Most voters understand the need to wait for absentee ballots to come in.

But why does it matter? As long as the winner is determined before they need to be sworn in, there is no problem except that people are impatient to know who the winner is.

Increased Costs & System Upgrades: Transitioning to RCV requires expensive updates to voting software, hardware, and extensive public education campaigns funded by taxpayers.

Upgrades - these have already been done. Changing back to regular elections will cost more if we change back than if we keep what we have.

Also, with RCV, you don't have the expense of runoff elections as we have in Anchorage mayoral races if no one gets at least 45%.

*Non-Monotonicity - anyone else unable to explain that? I did look it up. Not sure how it applies here Maybe because the highest vote getter can change from one round to the next when the second and third round votes get added in and the lowest vote getters drop out.

Could Alaska Have A Mid Decade Redistricting?

2026-09-18T16:48:01.814-08:00

President Trump called for mid-decade redistricting in Texas and other states as a way to gerrymander those states to make it harder for Democrats to win US House seats and a majority in the US House. Could that happen in Alaska too?

First of all, Alaska has only one US House seat; the whole state is just one US House district. So on the federal level there is no point to redistrict Alaska. It won't result in any more seats for the GOP because there's only one seat.

But, what if a governor wanted to change the balance of the Alaska House and Senate by a mid decade redistricting process?

I'm guessing the answer is no.

From the Alaska Constitution:

"§ 3. Reapportionment of House and Senate – The Redistricting Board shall reapportion the house of representatives and the senate immediately following the official reporting of each decennial census of the United States. Reapportionment shall be based upon the population within each house and senate district as reported by the official decennial census of the United States."

While I'm sure political game players would argue, "It says "shall" redistrict at this time, but it doesn't say they can't do it another time as well." I suspect that by the time it got to the Supreme Court, that reasoning would be rejected.

And we get more instructions from the state constitution:

"§ 8. Redistricting Board –
(b) Members of the Redistricting Board shall be appointed in the year in which an official decennial census of the United States is taken and by September 1 of that year. The governor shall appoint two members of the board. The presiding officer of the senate, the presiding officer of the house of representatives, and the chief justice of the supreme court shall each appoint one member of the board. . .
Board members serve until a final plan for redistricting and proclamation of redistricting has been adopted and all challenges to it brought under section 11 of this article have been resolved after final remand or affirmation."

Section 8 makes it clearer. Members shall be appointed in the year in which the official decennieal census . . . is taken. Again we might get the argument that it "may" be done at another time. Though there is no other time we get a decennial census.

Every district has to be the same size - generally the deviation in population needs to be less than 2% between districts. By mid-decade, people will have moved and it will be difficult to figure out the right size for each district. There are mid-decade censuses taken, but I'm not sure of their accuracy.

But the clincher is in the way the Board members are chosen. The governor has two picks, the President of the Senate, House Speaker, and chief Justice of the Supreme Court each choose one member. If any of the people holding those roles refuses to pick a mid-decade Board member, the process would be over.

And the Governor can't bring back the old Board, because, as the second paragraph says, Board members serve until the proclamation of redistricting has been adopted and all challenges have been resolved.

So even if the Supreme Court agreed that 'shall' only referred to a redistricting every ten years, it doesn't preclude that the Governor 'may' have one mid-decade, it would only take one of the four people assigned the job of selecting the members to refuse.

That doesn't mean that one day a Governor won't try to do this. I just think it would fail.

ADDENDUM: After completing the above, I called a retired attorney friend to ask exactly what 'shall' meant legally. Did it preclude a redistricting other than when the census data comes every ten years?

His response was: This is a perfect question for AI. I said I don't use AI. Why? Because I read Enshitification. He said, "ok, I'll use AI". He did. Basically the AI agreed with my conclusion, with a little stronger argument.

"Why Alaska's language is particularly strong
Three provisions work together.
First, §§ 1–3 repeatedly tie the redistricting event to the federal decennial census. Section 3 is especially direct: the Board “shall reapportion” the House and Senate “immediately following” the official reporting of each decennial census. The official Alaska Constitution confirms this wording. (Nancy Dahlstrom)

Second, § 8(b) creates the Board in the census year and provides that members serve through adoption of the final plan and resolution of the resulting challenges. That structure does not create a continuously sitting body with an open-ended power to redraw districts whenever circumstances change.
Third—and probably most important—§ 10 says that the resulting final plan:
“shall be effective for the election of members of the legislature until after the official reporting of the next decennial census”
That is considerably stronger than merely saying the Board must redistrict after every census. It specifies how long the resulting districts remain effective. (Nancy Dahlstrom)"

I was surprised to learn our Lt. Governor Nancy Dahlstrom had written about this. So I hit the links - ha! They take you to the Lt Governor's page that has the Alaska Constitution on it. AI seems to give Dahlstrom credit for writing the Alaska Constitution

It looked at what the Alaska Supreme Court had said - that Alaska was designed to have one plan per decade.

The AI also compared Alaska to a few other states and concluded that Alaska more emphatically stressed the decennial nature of redistricting in Alaska.

ADDENDUM 2: The Enshitification link is far more interesting and significant than what I've written. I urge you to take some time to listen to the interview of Cory Doctorow at the link. I had intended to do a post of Enshitification but never got it done, so just listen to the interview. And there are no ads.

The Odyssey - My Thoughts On The Movie

2026-09-15T13:55:06.123-08:00

I read The Odyssey at UCLA as a freshman. That was a long time ago, but while I don't remember all the details, I do recall the basics, and the excitement I felt reading it. Professor Pasinetti read passages of our assigned books aloud to the class in Greek, Latin, and Italian. He made the literature come to life. At the time I had just started college and knew nothing about him other than what I saw in class. The Wikipedia link above added a lot about his life for me.

We don't have IMAX in Anchorage and so I didn't hurry to see it. But finally we thought we should and spent a rainy Tuesday afternoon at the movies. There weren't many others in the theater.

From the beginning, the images seemed dark, literally. I assumed it was to emphasize they were night banquets with just candle light or scenes in a cave. The daylight scenes seemed more normal. But the blue credits on a black background were hard to read and I left the theater wondering if the projector lamp was just weak. If so, that may have affected my opinion of the film.

In general, I wasn't impressed. I think there were two basic reasons:

Troy today (2025)

1. We were in Turkey last year. When we got out of Istanbul, we took some tours - in Cappadocia, at Gallipoli, and another at Troy. The guides in Turkey are excellent - they train, they get licensed, and
they know their local history really well. But even so, you just get a peek at the places you are visiting.

The movie was like a guided tour through the book. Look quick on the left to see the suitors in the banquet hall, now on the right you can see men hiding inside the Trojan Horse, and as we come around the curve up ahead you will see the Charbidis biting off the heads of the sailors. We stopped at some places and walked around a bit, but what we got was a guided tour with short glimpses of the epic story of Odysseus. .

2. We got director Nolan's visualization of key scenes of the epic. It's his vision of what things and people looked like, and what scenes were important to portray. In my reading of The Oddesey, Circe didn't manually reshape human bodies into pig bodies. She cast a spell over them to transform them. Of course, every movie adaptation of a book is the director's vision of the book.

But The Odyssey is no ordinary book. It's a 3000 year old poem, first passed down orally before it was written. Nolan skims the book and gives us visuals of some of the more dramatic scenes. His Trojan Horse is no more Homer's than is the Horse Turkey has erected at the site of ancient Troy (On the right.)

When someone listens to the story teller relate the tale or reads a modern book version, each listener and reader conjures up their own image of the events. Once someone has seen the movie, they've had Nolan's image stamped into their imagination. Their own imagination, their personal interpretation, is eclipsed by the Nolan image.

But I'm not too worried. The book will remain available. Professors will continue to assign it in classes, and Nolan's film will fade away as just another film that tried to capture The Odyssey.

I realize that many reviewers have lauded the movie. But how many of them had actually read The Odyssey? How many were simply movie critics? Or people online trying to get hits so they can increase their income?

Here's an excerpt from Book X - story of Circe turning the men into pigs from The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Odyssey. Far different from Nolan's image.

“When they reached Circe’s house they found it built of cut stones, on a site that could be seen from far, in the middle of the forest. There were wild mountain wolves and lions prowling all round it—poor bewitched creatures whom she had tamed by her enchantments and drugged into subjection. They did not attack my men, but wagged their great tails, fawned upon them, and rubbed their noses lovingly against them.[86] As hounds crowd round their master when they see him coming from dinner—for they know he will bring them something—even so did these wolves and lions with their great claws fawn upon my men, but the men were terribly frightened at seeing such strange creatures. Presently they reached the gates of the goddess’s house, and as they stood there they could hear Circe within, singing most beautifully as she worked at her loom, making a web so fine, so soft, and of such dazzling colours as no one but a goddess could weave. On this Polites, whom I valued and trusted more than any other of my men, said, ‘There is some one inside working at a loom and singing most beautifully; the whole place resounds with it, let us call her and see whether she is woman or goddess.’
“They called her and she came down, unfastened the door, and bade them enter. They, thinking no evil, followed her, all except Eurylochus, who suspected mischief and staid outside. When she had got them into her house, she set them upon benches and seats and mixed them a mess with cheese, honey, meal, and Pramnian wine, but she drugged it with wicked poisons to make them forget their homes, and when they had drunk she turned them into pigs by a stroke of her wand, and shut them up in her pig-styes. They were like pigs—head, hair, and all, and they grunted just as pigs do; but their senses were the same as before, and they remembered everything.
“Thus then were they shut up squealing, and Circe threw them some acorns and beech masts such as pigs eat, but Eurylochus hurried back to tell me about the sad fate of our comrades. He was so overcome with dismay that though he tried to speak he could find no words to do so; his eyes filled with tears and he could only sob and sigh, till at last we forced his story out of him, and he told us what had happened to the others.
“‘We went,’ said he, ‘as you told us, through the forest, and in the middle of it there was a fine house built with cut stones in a place that could be seen from far. There we found a woman, or else she was a goddess, working at her loom and singing sweetly; so the men shouted to her and called her, whereon she at once came down, opened the door, and invited us in. The others did not suspect any mischief so they followed her into the house, but I staid where I was, for I thought there might be some treachery. From that moment I saw them no more, for not one of them ever came out, though I sat a long time watching for them.’ [emphasis added]

Somehow this sort of nuanced detail didn't come through in the movie.

Congressional Fisheries Debate Today - Begich and Hill; Sullivan and Peltola

2026-09-12T18:20:51.778-08:00

Today, the Congressional Debate on Fisheries took place in Kodiak. The Governor's debate was Wednesday. You can watch it here.

The debate is about fish policy. I include it here because there aren't a lot of chances to see debates between the candidates these days. Public debates used to be common. No longer.

On the video below, first you hear the debate by the House candidates Rep. Begich and Bill Hill. Then the Senate debate between Sen. Sullivan and Mary Peltola. I'm not sure why the other two candidates in the race were not there. Were they not invited? Did they choose not to attend? I don't know.

All four candidates in the governor's race were at that debate Wednesday.

I have a few reactions to how the candidates did, but I'll give you a chance to view the debate first.

I'd note the Bill Hill came out first and shook hands with the questioners. Rep. Begich did the same. Then Bill Hill went over to Rep. Begich and shook hands and spoke to him.

We first see Sen. Sullivan and Mary Peltola sitting at the table, so I don't know whether they greeted the interviewers and each other, But the body language at the table isn't warm and fuzzy.

Fisheries might be the least partisan big Alaskan issues. That makes these debates less revealing, perhaps, than if we had debates that dealt with more controversial issues.

Thoughts on Begich and Hill debate.

I was impressed with Begich's manner and knowledge of the issues. Hill also knew the issues. Hill's answers brought in the view of Alaska Natives and subsistence fishers. I thought it was telling that when the questioner said a zero percent bi-catch target was unrealistic. That wasn't the question, it was an assumption underlying the question. Hill's response was that it should be the goal. Begich agreed. Would Begich have said that if Hill hadn't first? I don't know. Mary Peltola in the second debate said no fishery has zero bi-catch but when bi-catch is in the metric tons, that's a different story.

Begich said he had written and passed more legislation than any freshman Congressman ever. Later he gave numbers: 13 bills, nine passed into law. I'll see if I can find out what they were and how you research the number of bills freshman Congressmen have introduced and passed into law.

I'd also take issue with Begich's statement that he travels the state and listens and responds to every Alaska. I don't believe that he has spoken to an open forum in the Anchorage area the whole time he's been in office. He speaks only to private groups that limit who attends. These generally are not announced publicly before the event takes place. I've written a number of letters to his office and I have not received any responses.

Thoughts on Sullivan and Peltola debate.

Sullivan was able to tout various bills he had passed that had improved Alaska fisheries. He contrasted the number of bills he passed to Peltola's no bills passed, without mentioning he has been in the Senate for 12 years, almost half of that time with Trump as president. Peltola was in Congress for only two years.

Both candidates knew the topic. One thing that struck me was Sullivan's tone. Whiney isn't quite the right word, but he sounded like someone who felt like he had being unfairly attacked and was exasperatedly trying to defend his record. Not like a successful and confident two term Senator. I'd note that Sullivan acknowledged that climate change was one of the factors resulting in fewer fish reaching subsistence fishers.

But you can judge for yourself.

Rapper Listens To Beatles For 1st Time Plus Yellopain "My Vote Will Count" [UPDATED]

2026-09-04T15:53:24.327-08:00

I've been reading Stacey Abrams, Our Time Is Now. It's about her work to register voters and the State of Georgia's work to suppress minority votes. In the last chapter she writes:

"I recently saw a YouTube video by a hip-hop artist named YelloPain. The opening sequence broke my heart as he tours his neighborhood and bitterly describes how useless voting seems. He invokes the promise of the Obama presidency, then laments all the ways life failed to improve. His damning indictment of the act of voting seems at once logical and tragic. But with his next verse, he rips into the fiction of voter apathy, and in his rapid-fire poetry, you come to understand that his reaction is more aptly treated as despair and disillusionment. . . (p.252)

"What Yellopain does best is a stroke of artistic and activist genius. He deftly illustrates how understanding and engaging in the political system is an issue of survival. Like a modern version of Schoolhouse Rock!, he explains the three branches of government, connecting their failures to our own. From health care policy and climate action to the social safety net and high finance, our votes determine how the public and the private sectors operate and where they intersect." (p. 253)

I thought I'd look fort the video. Among other things this year, I took training again to be a voter registrar and thought I might learn something. Maybe we could use the video when talking to younger voters who don't see any point of voting.

All I had was his name - Yellopain - and YouTube. He has lots of videos. I went through the titles and dates (Abrams book is copyrighted 2020, so the video is at least seven years old.)

I finally got to a video of someone reviewing Yellopain's video. It's called "My Vote Don't Count." But before I got to it, there was another video with a rapper right below the one that reviewed "My Vote Don't Count."

The title was "Rapper Listens To Beatles For The First Time." The cover had the rapper and a picture of the cover of the Beatles "Abbey Road."

Ir was late and I was in bed. I had a doctor's appointment today at 8:30am. I wasn't going to post anything last night, so I postponed finding the Yellopain Voting video and decided to see what the Rap meets Beatles video was going to be like.

I couldn't quite imagine someone who had never listened to a Beatles song and knew nothing about them. But I realized that they burst into the world's attention in the 1960s and disbanded in 1970. That's 56 years ago. When I was in my 20s, what did I know of the great musicians of the early 1900s? Not much. And which current musicians would I recognize? Not many. Maybe I should do a video of Geezer Listens To Rap. It's probably already been done.

Is he going to like the Beatles? I'd listen to a few minutes. He said he knew nothing about the Beatles. He knew there was something or someone called Yoko Ono but didn't know what it was. And a couple of times listening, he gets excited by the unknown drummer. I was quietly shouting, "RINGO STARR."

It began with "Come Together". As he went through the album track by track, I was reminded how good the songs and music are. And it was fun watching someone listen to the Beatles for the first time. It's the first video below.

[You can watch "My Vote Don't Count" below the Rapper and the Beatles, along with a more recent one, "My Vote Will Count"]

There are ads so you have to jump in and hit 'skip ad' a few times. It also appears that others have copied this idea of listening to the Beatles for the first time on YouTube.

This seems to be the Yellopain video Stacey Abrams wrote about:

And this is a more recent version called "My Vote Will Count" which also has some of the original video.

[UPDATE 9/12/2026: Friends have told me there's a whole genre called 'reaction videos']

Alaskan Pols Don't Seem To Believe In Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) [UPDATED]

2026-09-02T20:45:19.250-08:00

[I started this over a week ago. Since then, there's been a lot written about people dropping out of different races, how a couple of politicians have been blocked from running because their disclosures were incomplete.

My basic message here is that both the Republicans and the Democrats are signaling to the public that they don't have confidence in Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Or in voters actually using it. This is a shame because the Right has put a proposal on the November ballot to abolish RCV. The Democrats, in three key races - US House and Senate, and Alaska governor's race, have discouraged (apparently more forcefully than that) Democrats from competing with each other in the general election. To me that indicates distrust in voters being smart enough to actually use RCV to rank the Democrats on the ballot.

From what I can tell, looking at the 2024 US House race, a fair number of voters utilized their RCV option to rank candidates. But the two extra candidates (besides the main Democrat (Mary Peltola) and the main Republican (Nick Begich) were very marginal candidates - one in prison in New York and the other in the Alaska Independence Party. My belief is that both the candidates and the public need to learn how to use this process and it's likely the voters are smarter than the politicians think.]

We know the Republicans don't believe in it. They opposed it strongly from the beginning and they're behind Proposition 2 which would take Alaska back to the old system. (Prop 2, and this is important, would also get rid of open primaries - their real target - and rules about disclosure of people who contribute to PACs. You can read all 35 pages of Prop.2 here.)

When RCV was first being introduced, the Democratic leadership opposed Ranked Choice Voting (and the open primaries attached to the initiative), but came around to support RCV.

The biggest benefit of the RCV package that Alaskans passed, would appear to be the bi-partisan majorities in the state House and Senate. By getting rid of closed primaries, Alaskans prevented parties from electing the most extreme candidates in their party. With open primaries (vote for one candidate), the top four candidates get to the general election ballot (Ranked Choice - you can vote your first - fourth choices). It's resulted in more moderate legislators, who are able to work together and pass bills. At least that seems to be the outcome.

Our first RCV election - two key Republican candidates (Sarah Palin and Nick Begich) for US House seemed to siphon off votes from each other and Democrat Mary Peltola was elected. The next round, the top two Republican candidates for the House worked out a deal where Nancy Dahlstrom withdrew, and Nick Begich defeated Mary Peltola.

This current election (2026) we've seen lots of shenanigans, starting with the GOP controlled Division of Elections leaving candidate Daniel J. Sullivan off the US Senate ballot on the grounds (that exist no where in the law) that he wasn't a real candidate, that he wanted to confuse voters into thinking he was our sitting Senator, Dan S. Sullivan.

The Alaska Supreme Court required that he be put back on the ballot. He did reappear, but without a party affiliation (he was a registered Republican) and they added "Incumbent" to the sitting Senator's name (though the regs prohibit any honorifics).

Then voters began getting close to a million dollars worth of flyers and social media ads pushing two out-of-state candidates (yes that's legal) who were identified as progressive and an Alaska Native candidate who is listed as a Democratic Socialist and trashing leading Democratic candidate Mary Peltola. The strategy, apparently, was to get left leaning candidates on the final ballot to draw votes from Peltola.

They did get David Leslie (the Alaska Native candidate) on the general election ballot, but Daniel J. Sullivan also made it. How many of his votes were 'confused with Daniel S" and how many were intentional because of all the publicity he got from the attempts to wipe him off the ballot, we probably will never know.

So that's the Republican story.

But the Democrats seem to not believe the voters can handle RCV either. First, before the primary, Democratic candidate Matt Schultz withdrew from the race, taking the only serious Democratic candidate out of the election. He says we wasn't getting the party and financial support he needed. That left Nonpartisan Bill Hill, who got support from the normal liberal support groups - labor unions, the environmental crowd.

Now Democrat Tom Begich (the uncle of GOP Rep Nick Begich) has withdrawn from the general election (and the ballot) to support Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (JKT). JKT got 36,961 votes (22.5%) in the primary. Begich got 34,149 votes (20.8%) They were the two top vote getters - in the race for governor. A bunch of Republicans split the GOP vote. The top two - Bernadette Wilson got 16,456 votes (10%) and David Bronson got 13,349 (8%). With Begich out, that left Republican Treg Taylor to move up to the fourth spot (and the general election ballot.) But he was disqualified for not filling in the financial disclosure info when he signed up to be a candidate. Then his Lt. Gov candidate moved up to be the governor candidate and chose Treg Taylor's wife to be her running mate. Though she may have the same disclosure problems her husband has.

I'm hearing complaints from people I know, and I feel it myself, that these politicians don't trust Alaskan voters to rank the candidates.

They don't trust the voters to rank their preferred Democrat first and the other one second.

With two strong Democrats running for governor, it was a chance to demonstrate how RCV should work. Each should have strongly told their supporters to vote for them first and the other Democrat second. Emphasized that they were very similar on policy issues. This would have been especially important this year because we also vote on whether to end RCV (and I feel compelled to always point out we would also end open primaries and disclosure of those who give dark money. And other things are in there, like having Governor and Lt. Governor run separately, not as a team.)

Tom Begich sent a letter out to supporters that justified getting out of the race as a matter of money:

"At a time when so many Alaskans are already stretched thin, we cannot keep asking them to give more and more just to compete with much larger amounts of money flowing into politics in Alaska. Continuing through November would require millions more, and we believe that the strongest path to victory is to bring Democratic voters, donors and resources together behind one candidate.
Before we made this decision, I spoke directly with Jonathan about the priorities at the heart of our campaign and the promises we made to Alaskans.
We share a commitment to strong public schools, affordable energy, housing and health care, and making sure Alaska receives its fair share from our resources."

But it's clear both parties are wary of having more than one candidate from their party running for the same office. The Republicans did everything they could to push the candidacies of marginal Democratic candidates onto the US Senate race. At this point that seems to have failed. Right now we have Peltola (the Democrat who got 49.5% of the vote in the primary) and three Republicans - the current US Senator Dan S. Sullivan, Daniel J. Sullivan, and Jerry Heikes. [I'd note that today the Anchorage Daily News said that Democrat David Leslie has dropped out of the race under pressure from Democrats, and that Jerry Heikes, listed as a Republican, has moved up to the fourth spot.]

And right now, there is one Democrat and three Republicans running for Governor. (The deadline to drop out has passed, but there are questions about Jodi Taylor's financial disclosure which is pretty much the same as her husband's was.) [UPDATE 9/9/2026: Treg Taylor is back on the ballot on orders apparently from the Lt. Governor's (the same Nancy Dahlstrom from 2024) superiors because, they say, lots of people have left things blank and not been disqualified.]

I'd also note that Candi English (Treg Taylor's running mate) moving up as a governor candidate raises new questions. She's been relatively invisible and it seems odd for her to leapfrog over other candidates onto the general ballot.

There is no perfect system. Whatever system you have, people figure out ways to game the system. Ideally, we will not get rid of Ranked Choice Voting in November and we can learn how to make it work.

As I looked back on the 2024 US House race, there were four candidates:

Mary Peltola
Nick Begich
Eric Hafner (who was then and is now a prisoner in a New York prison and labeled as a Democrat)
John Wayne Howe (Alaska Independence Party)

This is a disparate group of candidates. You can't judge RCV based on whether voters in this race chose to use more than one vote or not. Why would a serious voter cast a vote for someone in prison across the country? Possibly as protest. But then why cast a second vote?

Peltola voters have no reason to cast a second vote. What would be the point?

But, in fact, people did cast second votes. The first person eliminated was Eric Hafner.

The charts come from the Alaska Division of Elections page here.

Hafner got 3558 votes. The Hafner voters gave 267 to Nick Begich, 661 to John Wayne Howe, and 1313 to Mary Peltola. That totals 2214 second place votes transferred to other candidates. 62% of the people who voted for Hafner ranked a second candidate. That seems to be a fair number. (I understand exhausted on the chart to mean that there wasn't a second choice vote. Overvotes, I think means they marked more than one person for the same ranking. [I called the Division of Elections in Anchorage to check. They referred me to the main office in Juneau. The guy who answered the phone had to go ask someone else. But eventually he confirmed that my guesses were correct. I also asked about the Fraction column and he had to go ask again. Apparently for some jurisdictions the votes can be divided into fractions, but Alaska doesn't do that so these are whole votes, or 1.]

John Wayne Howe got 13,871 votes and 7541 of his voters (or 54%) ranked someone second.

Given that Eric Hafner and John Wayne Howe voters were probably disaffected voters who chose a) a New York prisoner and b) and Alaska Independence Party candidate as their first choice, these seem like fairly high percentages of voters using RCV.

If there were two strong candidates from the same party with very similar policy positions on the general ballot, I'd guess there would be a higher percentage of second place votes. It's true that the first time around (2022), Sarah Palin and Nick Begich (both Republicans) attacked each other instead of working together. In 2024 the second place 'name' Republican, Nancy Dahlstrom, dropped out rather than run against Nick Begich.

But we won't see two such candidates from the Democratic side in state wide office elections this year. We will see that with Republicans in the Governor's race, but not really in the US Senate race. There we have one Democrat (Peltola), one main Republican (Sen, Sullivan), and two lesser Republicans. The three Republicans are not likely to cooperate and tell the voters to rank the other two Republicans. But the 2024 numbers suggest that the most voters will rank a second choice.

The US House race was the only statewide election in 2024 except for the presidential election. I'm guessing the presidential election could have been RCV, but in any case Trump won a majority so if it was RCV, there was no need to go to the RCV round,

My biggest concern here is that the politicians aren't going to let us actually use ranked choice voting because if they have two main candidates competing, they'll pull the one with fewer votes out. The three Republicans on the ballot for governor are an exception to the trend I'm calling out here. Let's see if they cooperate and tell voters to give their second and third place votes the other Republicans.

[This is not as succinct (or probably as clear) as I wanted this to be, but I need to move on.]

[UPDATE: September 24, 2026: I've responded to the anonymous commenter here.]

REPOST: Nov 6, 2026: What A Trump Presidency Would Look Like

2026-08-28T15:01:21.187-08:00

[I'm reposting this as the Guardian reports today:

"Trump administration pushing to hand parcel of Yosemite land to private developer – report"

The general predictions of Trump's behavior are pretty much spot on. The specific predictions of actions aren't all right on the mark. I predicted, for example, that Trump would build Trump resorts in National Parks.]

The Nov. 6, 2026 Post:

I suspect a Trump presidency would be worse than many imagine, and not as bad as some imagine. After Bush v Gore I proposed that there be a cable channel that followed what happened with the actual winner and a channel that created a world in which the other won. I'd really like the Trump supporters to see what a Trump-led US would really look like. But neither candidate will actually be able to do much until members of Congress start breaking bread with members across the aisle again.

But here's a bit of prognostication based on what we do know about Trump.

Preface: I’ve done a several posts about Donald Trump and what makes him tick. There’s a post about his father and grandfather. There’s the post about his mentor, Roy Cohn. And we’ve all seen his behavior on the campaign trail. Using that history, I think we can predict how he will behave as president. We can’t predict specific actions, but I think we can predict the kinds of actions he’s likely to take. What he actually does will depend on events, on other people, and on Trump’s ability to figure out how to make the US government apparatus work.

So, let’s start with his world view that underlies why he does what he does. (A lot can be seen in his relationship with his father and with his brother who did not live up to his father’s ideal and thus was Donald’s first and closest example of a loser. See the post on his father.)

Then we’ll look at the sorts of behaviors this world view leads to.

Finally, I’ll give some examples of those behaviors once Trump gains the White House.

Trump’s World View:

Power is everything.
Life is a long poker session and while you're going to lose a few games, at the end of the night you want to go home a winner. Poker is about bluffing. Poker-face means being able to lie without people reading your thoughts. Honesty is a handicap in poker. You can call people all sorts of vile names during the game yet go home as friends.
The worst thing you can be is a loser. Losers are contemptible. Not being a loser is one of Trump’s key motivations to have power. To do or say whatever to have power. And he trashes his opponents. And when he doesn’t have power, he at least has to look like he does. (Would those missing tax returns show us he isn't as wealthy as he claims?)
With power he can do whatever he likes with impunity. Rules don’t matter if you have power. Reward and punishment are the basic tools.

You do favors for people who can help you. You try to stay nice as long as they have something you need - prestige, support for your projects, fulfillment of your lusts. You can take what you want from the less powerful and they don’t have the power to do anything about it. You can take the women you want. You can stiff contractors because taking you to court will cost them more than walking away. You can pay off the rule makers, such as politicians, to bend the law to your will.
But if they don’t cooperate, you punish them.

You hire lawyers to fix what you’ve broken. Lawyers, don’t simply defend you, they are also attack dogs to destroy those who cross you.

Trump’s behavior based on his need to be the most powerful.

The need to appear powerful means:

Honesty is a handicap. He says whatever makes him look good. He denies all allegations of wrong doing. He lies about opponents. The only truth is Trump power. Facts that don't support him are lies.
The center of attention is the best place to be.
Promoting his private interests and fulfilling his needs are the basic goals.
Putting the Trump name on everything he owns and even things he doesn’t own.
Attack, counterattack, never apologize. (See post on Roy Cohn.)

Trump as President

Applying his world view and the behaviors they lead to, we can anticipate the kinds of things he's likely to do as president.

Center of attention - Winning the presidency will assure this goal for as long as he holds the presidency - which could be briefly for any number of reasons, or, if he has his way, could be for his lifetime.

He’ll want to be seen with the world’s most powerful leaders. Putin may well be the first one to be feted at the White House. Watch for opulent displays of power and wealth with the rich and famous and powerful leaders of the world.

We can be sure his new Washington DC hotel will be the center of inaugural events as much if not more than the White House itself. And we can assume that he will totally remodel the White House. Maybe a White Trump Tower?

The Trump name: Look for the Trump name to appear on the White House and Air Force One. If he can figure out a way to change the name of the country to Trump’s United States of America, he will. Maybe it will be on all passports. On money. On all signs for government buildings and national parks. How about Trump’s United States Marines?

Promoting his private interests, particularly his wealth:

Look for changes in the law that help Trump, starting with income taxes and deregulation. He would find it useful to delete all the records of federal agencies that have records about him. Again the IRS comes to mind and the court system.

He’ll want to make government properties available to his real estate empire. Or make arrangements that benefit him for other businesspeople to take over government property. He'll be privatizing agencies and land. He might want to make National Parks into Trump resorts. As with his campaign, he'll have the government contract with various Trump businesses. When challenged on this, he'll say he's saving the country money and attack the challengers.

Attack, Counterattack, Never Apologize

Nixon had an enemies list. It will look tame compared to Trump's list. It will have anyone who has blocked his path toward something he wanted, anyone who mentioned his small hands or didn't do his bidding fast enough. Top on the list are the media who can expose his lies and constantly make his life miserable. He’s already promised to change the libel laws. He’ll change whatever laws he can to stop the media from saying bad things about him.

Those who block his policies will suffer merciless attacks in all the ways we’ve seen on the campaign, plus whatever levers of government power he gets access to. Republicans (Paul Ryan is toast) and Democrats who stand up to him will be subject to withering attacks, both visible and behind the scenes. Comey will become the new J. Edgar Hoover, using the FBI as Trump’s private mafia. If Comey doesn’t cooperate, there will be a new FBI chief quickly.

The first foreign leaders - including terrorist leaders - to belittle Trump, will see massive retaliation. If they are white, western nations, there will be vitriol and threats of economic sanctions. If they are part of the rest of the world, don’t be surprised to see Trump USA Air Force jets unleashed on them.

Surprises that shouldn’t be surprises

Given that Trump sees life as a game of negotiations, lots of what he's promised on the campaign is just bluffing. Not everything will go as many expect.

The Clinton's - Since Trump’s world is a series of poker games, once he wins, the election will be over. All the anti -Clinton talk was bluster to win the election. All he's charged her with, he'd do himself. It was just competitive trash talking. If he can find the Clintons and their foundation and allies useful, he could be gracious to them and find ways to use them to increase his own power.

The Wall - I’m guessing there will be a symbolic move to start a wall along the Mexican border, but it might eventually evolve into a border-walk of casinos and hotels and a revised border patrol mission to help businesses get cheap labor and make deals with wealthy foreigners who can help the Trump mission.

Trump Supporters - They’ll continue to be fed Trump’s racist, sexist, nationalist, anti-semitic rhetoric, but other than that, their lives won’t be better. He was nice to them while he needed them. To the extent that he will need them for his next terms, he’ll feed them the lies they love. He'll rant to them about those blocking his reforms. But he has no real interest in them other than what they can do for him and he has no idea of how to actually improve their lives. Trump’s tax plans will cripple the economy and the hollowness of making America great again will become obvious. Except for the very, very rich. But even they will be vulnerable to a failing economy.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. These are the things that Trump would like to do if he could. But I imagine he'll find the combined resistance of the Clinton supporters and the establishment Republicans he's displaced, of the bureaucracy which is intended to slow down despots, of the courts, and of women and people of color will be overwhelming. And don't forget the rest of the world. Even his supporters will eventually figure out they've been had.

Preferably, Clinton will win and the Trump presidency can be the basis of cable television series.

Alaska Earthquakes - About 60 Since Midnight

2026-08-22T21:20:57.850-08:00

There was a very distinct jolt.

Then, a moment later, a roll. Two seconds at most.

I checked the Alaska Earthquake Center website.

The most recent earthquake listed was 11:41pm. Mt. Redout . A magnitude 2.3 quake at 80 feet depth. It sure felt stronger than that. Since I was on their website and there was a button to report my experience with the quake, I did.

This afternoon I asked my granddaughter if she felt it. No. Oh wait, was that an earthquake? Yeah I felt it.

Then a friend who's visiting said what time was it? 11:41 pm. There was a 3.9 at 11:42.

And that must have been the one I felt. Closer and stronger. I reported the wrong one. Sorry. Looking at the Center's website, I see there were 61 earthquakes between midnight and now (8:45pm) in Alaska. Most were less than magnitude 3, but six were 3 or more. Below is from the list on the webpage, but just focusing on the one at 11:41 and 11:42pm last night.

A magnitude 3 earthquake is relatively mild, yet it was noticeable. And ever since we experienced the 7.2 earthquake November 2018, earthquakes do get our attention as we wait to see if there is going to be more or not.

While I was looking for the previous link, I found another one that gives equivalents of Richter Scale Magnitude from 0,5 "A Large Hand grenade" up through all the other numbers to 10: "Never recorded by humans."

Heikes Would Ship Illegal Alien Criminals to Guantanamo Bay To Be Tried and Killed

2026-08-20T14:08:04.593-08:00

I really want to do a post on Ranked Choice Voting and how candidates seem to not trust voters to actually use RCV the way it was intended. But I got a bit side-tracked by Gerald Heikes' 5th place finish. But it turns out to fit right in to what I want to write about RCV. So let's leave it here as background for that future post. (Not too far in the future I hope.)

With less than 1% of votes yet to be counted Gerald Heikes is in 5th place in the US Senate race, 19 votes behind the 4th place candidate David Leslie. Leslie is listed as a Democrat who listed no funding or campaigning, but was heavily promoted by an Outside conservative PAC. The top four candidates will be on the general election ranked choice ballot. (Unless they withdraw, in which case the next highest vote getter moves up.) I'd note, there appear to be about 900 votes left to count.

The Alaska Beacon (August 12, 2026) said

"Of Right For Alaska’s $1.2 million in spending through Aug. 7, nearly $574,000 went to oppose Sullivan with $410,000 backing Republican Gerald Heikes and nearly $219,000 to support Earl “Skip” Southworth of the Alaskan Party – the successor to the right-leaning Alaskan Independence Party. An Earl Southworth of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, donated to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in 2024 and to Democratic state Sen. Forrest Dunbar a decade earlier, FEC records show. OpenSecrets reached out to Heikes and Southworth but did not immediately receive responses from either." (emphasis added)

Below is from a 2020 interview when Gerald Heikes was running for the US House against Don Young. It's worth reading his positions

From KTVF, Fairbanks (includes video):

Photo from Ballot Ready

"Published: Aug. 7, 2020 at 4:10 PM AKDT
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) -

Republican Gerald “Jer” Heikes is running to represent Alaska in the U.S. House of Representatives. This seat is currently occupied by Don Young.
He said he is running because what he sees in Congress “doesn’t fit the narrative for anybody being truthful and honest.”
“I see every politician up there grandstand[ing] for some reason, then they lie about anything and everything to get what they want. That’s something I cannot do, is be able to lie or compromise because I’m a born-again Christian, which makes me a perfect target for the left, and lying is not part of life. If you can’t be truthful about what you’re doing and be honest in your opinions and what you have to say, then the deception won’t work for you as a human being going through life.”
According to Heikes, if he gets to Washington, there are things on the floor of the House that he would love to talk about. “This started out as a godly nation. Now we’re an ungodly nation, and everybody’s pointing fingers and they’re backbiting like little children and squabbling and they’re putting on shows and antics because of the camera. But they’re actually hiding their true selves in the lies that they’re putting forth.”
Heikes said he’d like to make Alaska a place where children can grow up and be safe. “We can have laws that protect us from illegal aliens -- that if you’re an American citizen and you’re attacked, or something happens to you and your family because of an illegal alien, they are shipped out of the country to like Guantanamo Bay. We’ll have like a three-judge military panel try them. And if they caused harm enough or they murder an American citizen, then they’ll be immediately sentenced to death, taken out in the back of the courthouse and done in. And there should be a cremation facility there, because there’ll be a lot of people going there.”
He added, “If they find that they are not worthy of death, then they’re deported back to their home country; but if they are found back in America illegally, then they go back and face the death penalty again and from the same three-judge court.”
Heikes would also like to see a federal loan for road-building in Alaska. “We need to build roads in Alaska. We need to build roads from Fairbanks to Nome, to Bethel, to branch out like that and fill in the blanks,” he said, adding, “A lot of people outside don’t realize that half the stuff is either flown in or barged into Alaska, and we need a decent roadway system that spans the whole state.”
He said, “From the first of January to the first of May, 9,900,000 babies were aborted worldwide. And since the COVID thing came on, there’s 150,000 deaths due to former ailments that people have and things of that nature. We spent trillions of dollars, yet we murder, at an unprecedented rate, the unborn. That has to stop.”
Heikes is running against John Nelson and Don Young on the Republican Primary Ballot on August 18th."

Here's (a bit of) what the Anchorage Daily News said about Heikes in 2024:

"Gerald Heikes, a Palmer resident and perennial candidate for public office in Alaska, has no money to spend on building a campaign website or advertising his positions. But a Democrat-backed group is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars highlighting Heikes’ anti-abortion stance in a quest to bolster Democratic incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola’s chances at reelection." (emphasis added)

I've got more to say about the Alaska US Senate race and ranked-choice voting strategies in general. Meanwhile, let's get this up so people know who this candidate is. He still has a chance to be on the November ballot."

Here's the vote count as of August 20, 2026 1pm:

One Very Clear Winner - Prop 1 - Alaskans Want Spending Limits

2026-08-18T21:48:37.999-08:00

For other election results, click here. Just refresh the page to see if there are updates.

I'd note Kreis-Tomkins is leading in the governor's race, with Tom Begich, though the combined Republican numbers are formidable. Peltola is slightly ahead of Sullivan, with Daniel J. Sullivan a distant third.

But these are early numbers. Only Ballot Measure one, to reinstate campaign finance limits is clearly going to win. And some state legislative races with only one candidate. A few others look conclusive, but the top four candidates move to the general election.

Primary Election Day Tomorrow in Alaska and Prediction Markets

2026-08-17T21:51:56.313-08:00

Hard to believe it's finally here. We didn't get any campaign literature in the mail today!!!

Probably the most uncertainty centers around the Governor's race. There are lots of known candidates. Which of the Republicans will end up in the top four? And will other Republicans drop out in the belief that being on the ballot could siphon off votes from the top Republican and help the top Democrat. Will the second Democrat, if there is one, also drop out?

Ranked Choice Tabulation Questions

Given that we have Ranked Choice Voting, voters can rank all four candidates - first choice, second choice, third choice, fourth choice. If a candidate gets 50%+1 vote in the first round that candidate wins. If no one gets over 50%, the candidate with the fewest first place votes is dropped and that candidate's second place votes are distributed to the other candidates.

DOE_Tabulation_60sec_HULU.mp4 Link to the video explaining how they count ranked choice voting from the Division of Elections. Couldn't find a way to embed the video here. [I did look, and it can be done, but I didn't find instructions I could use.)

I have questions about tabulating the votes, but tomorrow is election day and I'm not going to try to get answers from the Division of Elections until after the election.

The video doesn't explain how, if ever, the third and fourth choice votes would count. Perhaps if someone's choice for a second place vote has already been eliminated, the third place vote would count. (I couldn't find anything that actually says that.) And with only four candidates in the general, I don't think you would ever get to the fourth choice vote.

Also, what if someone got no first place votes, but was the second place choice for all the other candidates? That person would be eliminated on the first round and would never get the second place votes. It's not a likely scenario, but something like that could happen.

Ranked Choice Strategy Questions

In 2022, Sarah Palin and Nick Begich split the Republican vote in the general and enough second place votes gave Peltola the win.

In 2024, two Republicans pulled out of the general, presumably because they didn't want to do the same thing, and Nick Begich beat Peltola. But that year Trump was also on the ballot and that brought out lots of Republican voters. (Total votes for US House: 2024 = 329,493; 2022=263,610)

Ranked Choice Voting is supposed to overcome this sort of problem by giving voters the option to make second and third choice votes. But not enough voters have done that. Will they learn to do that in the future? Are there good strategic reasons not to rank? What are they? Will there be candidates who urge their voters to choose Candidate B as their second choice?

The Spoiler Candidates and the Spoiler PAC Campaigns

My previous post was about Outside [Alaska lingo for outside of Alaska] PACs spending lots of money on fringe candidates - one from Arizona, one from South Dakota, and one Alaskan - in an attempt to get them onto the final four in the general.

One of those candidates - Richard Grayson - has said he would withdraw if he were in the final four. Today Grayson emailed me a link to a review of what the prediction markets are saying about the Alaska US Senate race. There's a lot more discussion at the link, but here's the gist:

That's hard to read

That was too small, and now it's too big, but the chart is in the link. I've also looked at the Kalshi page on this race and it's clear I need to learn a lot more about prediction markets and what everything means. I do suspect that a lot of people who are betting are not from Alaska and don't really know that much about our elections. But I don't really know.

The prediction markets didn't do that well in Michigan and Wisconsin.

In comparison, on June 23, 2026 I wrote:

"At this point, I''d guess that Peltola, Sen. Sullivan, and Kohlhaas* would be the top three, scooping up most of the votes. As I look at the 2024 House race, the others won't get many votes. Though I suspect Dustin Darden has run often enough that people will vote for him because they recognize his name. And Daniel J. probably has a good chance to get votes too, for the very reasons the Sen. Sullivan campaign and the Republican Party of Alaska and the National Party want him off the ticket. It would be between him and Darden for fourth place.
Given that early polls show Peltola ahead of Sen. Sullivan, having Daniel J. on the November ballot would be a threat to Sen. Sullivan's reelection. If Daniel J. made it to the general election, and there he pulled 5% of the vote from the Senator, it could easily be enough to give Peltola the victory. Some might say that Peltola's ahead now, so she'd win either way. I think that's counting your chicks before the eggs are laid.
[*I'd mentioned Kohlhaas in an earlier paragraph as another candidate (Alaska Libertarian Party) who had run often enough that people knew his name."]

Tomorrow evening, and surely by Wednesday, we'll know.

[This post has more of a deadline than most, so I'm going to post now without proofing as much as I normally would. If I find typos etc., I'll fix them. I won't change content, but if I do, like always, I'll make it clear what I did.]

Richard Grayson Says That If He Gets To General, He'll Drop Out

2026-08-12T10:16:45.942-08:00

The Grayson flyers keep coming.

I tried to find out more about him and found this interview with Tucson Now from 2024. He just doesn't sound like a conniving politician trying to sabotage Mary Peltola. Much more like a court jester playing around with the system

So yesterday I emailed him to find out what his connection with Fair Deal Alaska was.

"Mr. Grayson,

I'm getting daily flyers touting you on one side and tearing down Mary Peltola on the other side. As an Alaskan voter and as an Anchorage blogger, I'm curious about these flyers. They say "Paid for by Fair Deal Alaska, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee."

When did they contact you to let you know they were doing this? I've watched a Tucson Live video of you and it seems like all this is a joke for you. But it appears that Fair Deal Alaska is trying to get you into the top four in the hopes that you will be in the top four and take votes from Mary Peltola as a way to insure Sen. Sullivan gets reelected.

So my questions are:

When, if ever, did Fair Deal Alaska contact you to let you know they were supporting you?
How do you feel about the possibility that your campaign will help Sen. Sullivan get reelected?

Thanks,"

And this morning, I got this reply:

Steve,

Thanks for your letter and for not cursing me out like most people have.

I have said that unless I hear otherwise from Mary's campaign, in the unlikely event that I do make the Top Four, I will drop out the way Republicans Nancy Dahlstrom and Matthew Salisbury did in the '24 House race (when I ran tenth out of 12). (emphasis mine)

Fair Deal Alaska never contacted me. I learned about it only from the initial story a week ago Sunday evening by Nathaniel Herz in Northern Journal. It's since been reprinted in the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Beacon, etc. It would be ILLEGAL for Fair Deal Alaska or any super PAC to contact a candidate. If you ever wondered, like I did, what makes super PACs super is that they are dark money who cannot have any contact with candidates. Fair Deal Alaska gave $315,000 to Carol "KItty" Hafner and $313,000 to me. Another super PAC, American Democracy Project gave money to another Democrat running, David Leslie. I was the one who told David about that; he didn't know anything about it. I posted a list from yesterday on my blog. If you click on the image, you can see it large enough to read:

Shady Super PAC "Fair Deal Alaska" Spends $313,431 on the Campaign of Alaska's Green Party U.S. Senate Candidate Richard Grayson

Shady Super PAC "Fair Deal Alaska" Spends $313,431 on the Campaign of Al...According to Capitol Hill Access and our own somewhat suspect mathematical skills the shady, presumably right-w...

Presumably Republicans are behind it, just as Democrats are behind the super PAC, RIght for Alaska, spending money on behalf of a Republican candidate, Gerald "Jerry" Heikes. In the 2024 House race, a super PAC also spent money on behalf of Heikes; it was presumed to be someone supporting Mary Peltola.

So this is quite upsetting to me. I just assumed that running for Senate in Alaska would be like running for the House was in '24: trying to push Mary to the left (like she wouldn't support Kamala Harris before the primary and really not for a very long time) but getting a hundred or so votes (I finished tenth out of 12) and then endorsing Mary. Because anyone with any sense understands there are only two people who matter in this election. I don't think the mailings will do any good. They will just annoy people, and I am getting lots of annoyed emails and angry phone calls. So I think and hope I will finish far below the Top Four.

If you want to know more about me, you can google my name (or as people who are not elderly like me say, search it up) and "candidate" or "writer." I have been in newspapers since 1979 when I was 28 and running for vice president. I'll link to a couple of things below.

Thanks again. I hope I've answered your questions. Again, thank you for being civil.

Best,
Richard

So our attention should be focused on Fair Deal Alaska. And everyone should already be suspicious of PACs named with empty feel good phrases like "Fair Deal." The same goes for campaign ads that promise apple pie but with no recipes for how it will be made.

He attached some of the old references. (Not sure why the images are black, but I'll leave them for now because they're attached to the headlines below.)

In Arizona, No Labels Is Attracting Potential Candidates It Doesn’t Want

Sue Halpern

The state has recognized the group as a legitimate political party. Why is No Labels so angry?

Marta McCave, "White House Fever," USA Today, October 5, 1983, 2A.

Clipping found in USA Today published in McLean, Virginia on 10/5/1983. Marta McCave, "White House Fever," USA T...

"Cash and absentee votes shaped elections," Jackson Hole News and Guide, 11/12/14

"Cash and absentee votes shaped elections," Jackson Hole News and Guide,...

Clipping found in Jackson Hole News and Guide published in Jackson, Wyoming on 11/12/2014. "Cash and absentee vo...

Are Richard Grayson and Carol Hafner on the ballot to confuse the voters and so should be removed?

2026-08-08T15:47:25.100-08:00

Richard Grayson interview in Arizona 2024. He's clearly doing this for giggles. He says in the video that most of his voters were probably mental patients. After watching the video, I even wonder whether he is even connected with the flood of flyers coming to left-leaning voters in Alaska that push Grayson as a progressive candidate on one side and trash Mary Peltola on the other side.

I don't see a way to embed the video, but the link takes you to the video quickly. He's somewhat of a goof-ball.

Response to Anonymous

2026-08-01T00:01:16.854-08:00

The previous post garnered a response from Anonymous.

"Tells us why? Women and Girls: Reports from UN Women indicate that over 38,000 women and girls have been killed in Gaza during the conflict. Of these documented deaths, approximately 22,000 were adult women and 16,000 were girls.

Children: UNICEF estimates that at least 21,000 to 22,000 children have been killed, with over 44,500 children injured. Why did they have to die to make Israel safer? That would mean that every other child in Anchorage would be dead, Look around that classroom you volunteer at and every other child would be dead.

"Approximately 1.16 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes."

Really?? What does that have to do with the genocide Israel has engaged in??

Hey but if it makes you feel better. The usual whataboutism from you."

It's easier to respond here in another post than in the comment section.

I'm trying to put myself in A's head to understand what he's (I'm guessing Anon is a 'he') trying to say and why. I guess I could just ignore it. The challenge is to respond positively. Well, at least neutrally. Just focusing on the content. Though that's hard because I'm puzzled at the hints of hostility.

1. For starters, this is clearly from someone who reads my posts often enough to refer to

He's read here about the third grade class where I volunteer
The last sentence "The usual whataboutism from you." 'Usual' suggests he reads enough to think that is something I often do.
The style and tone are similar to someone who has left other comments over the years

2. "Tells us why?"

I'm not sure what this refers to.

3. The stats on Women and Girls and then the paragraph on Children

This is detail I didn't present. I do offer data that covers children, but not women and girls specifically. As I said in the post "Nothing in depth, just a sampling" So, the commenter could have positively offered this information to supplement what I'd written. Instead, I read an accusation that I left this information out, maybe intentionally.
"Why did they have to die to make Israel safer? - A legitimate question he could have added
The reference to Anchorage children and those in the classroom where I volunteered is a powerful way to make the point I was trying to convey when I wrote "Remember each person who dies, civilian or soldier, leaves holes in people’s hearts - parents, children, spouses, siblings, fiancées, life-long friends, work colleagues. Leaves holes in families, at school, at work, in communities."

4. ""Approximately 1.16 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes."

Really?? What does that have to do with the genocide Israel has engaged in??

I'm not sure why he thinks this post is focused on "genocide Israel has engaged in." The title of the post is "People Are Dying, Are You Actively Trying to End The Killing?" implying it's about death. The first lines clarify the scope of the post: "This began as a protest against war - Netanyahu's non-stop killing of Palestinians and other Arabs, the US-Israeli war in Iran, and the various other wars going on in the world, mostly using Western weapons of destruction and death.
But then I looked at other death statistics - worldwide traffic deaths for instance. A lot more people die of vehicle crashes than war."
I'm writing about death and I mention Palestinians in the first paragraph but in the context of other wars, not that I'm focusing on Gaza. Rather, Gaza is an example of war caused deaths and destruction. And I further clarify that I realized that, as horrible as war is, more people die of car crashes than war. But Anon somehow wants it to be about genocide, specifically in Palestine. He should write his own blog. And maybe he does, but he signs in as Anonymous so we don't know.

5. "Hey but if it makes you feel better. The usual whataboutism from you."

The veiled hostility we heard in the first sentence, again.
"Whataboutism"? Here's a definition form The Merriam-Webster online dictionary, which is almost identical to other definitions on Wikipedia and other online dictionaries:

"whataboutism

noun
what·about·ism ˌ(h)wä-tə-ˈbau̇-ˌti-zəm ˌ(h)wə-
plural whataboutisms
: the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse" (emphasis added)

I can see how Anon might think that my saying there are more deaths from causes other than war is an attempt to downplay the deaths of war. But it ignores the whole context of the post. First, I'm not responding to an accusation (well, I guess I am here in the comment, but I wasn't when I wrote the post). Rather I wanted to write about the many unnecessary deaths in the world and first focused on war. But then realized that there were more unnecessary deaths from non-war causes. So I wrote about them as well. The whole point was to call people's attention to unnecessary deaths and then to challenge them to find ways they can personally work to decrease that number.. But I put that part off to a later post because the original post had gotten long enough.

Anon seems to have focused on the post he wanted me to write, or that he would like to write, not the post I actually wrote. He made a few legitimate additions to the numbers I offered and a poignant example of the death toll in Gaza by referring to Anchorage kids. But underlying everything was a hostility that I don't understand. I discussed issues he mentioned, but he's taken them out of context. I'm sorry for the underlying anger he seems to have that caused him to focus on some of what I wrote, but not the whole context of what I wrote.

After writing this and letting it sit, I read my book for next week's book club - The Constitution of Knowledge by Jonathon Rauch. It's pretty dense and I'm way behind. But I got to a section that talked about the evolution of the Scientific Method. It points to an important shift where scientists moved away from talking about the writer and focusing on the ideas.

That, I think, is what disturbed me about Anon's comments. They seemed more focused on me, the writer and my motives and less on what I wrote. To my knowledge he doesn't know me, except through what I write on the blog. If he had something to add or to contest, he could have done that without attacking the person who wrote it.

People Are Dying, Are You Actively Trying to End The Killing?

2026-07-28T23:51:36.379-08:00

This began as a protest against war - Netanyahu's non-stop killing of Palestinians and other Arabs, the US-Israeli war in Iran, and the various other wars going on in the world, mostly using Western weapons of destruction and death.

But then I looked at other death statistics - worldwide traffic deaths for instance. A lot more people die of vehicle crashes than war. War, however, is intentional destruction and killing while the others, usually, are side effects other other, generally useful, activities. Though one wonders whether the deaths caused by, Elon Musk's cutting of AID funding was just stupid ignorance or intended. His white, South African cultural heritage suggests the possibility that he knew what would happen and he approved.

In any case, the intent was to call attention to the unnecessary deaths all around us, and which the United States plays, if not the main role, certainly a subsidiary role.

And then to remind people that there is something they can do to stop unnecessary deaths. As I wrote, I realized this second part would best be left for a second post.

And so this post sat here in limbo. Well, now I'm bending over backwards and sliding under the stick to finish this and post it.

WAR

Let’s just start with wars. Nothing in depth, just a sampling. Remember each person who dies, civilian or soldier, leaves holes in people’s hearts - parents, children, spouses, siblings, fiancees, life-long friends, work colleagues. Leaves holes in families, at school, at work, in communities.

US-Israeli-Iran War

“As of 2025, Iran's population is around 92 million. In recent years, however, Iran's birth rate has dropped significantly.” Wikipedia

The US population when I checked just now was 342 million at Census.gov

“IRAN WAR DEATH TOLL 2026 — LIVE US, IRANIAN & ISRAELI CASUALTIES

Last updated: July 16, 2026 — Day 140 of Operation Epic Fury — Iranian officials say US strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded more than 300 over the past week, while Jordan reports shooting down eight Iranian missiles — Iranian figures remain unverified independently
Total Iran war death toll (verified ranges, as of July 16, 2026 / Day 140): Across all fronts of the 2026 Iran-Israel-US war (Operation Epic Fury), cross-source counts put total deaths at roughly 7,144 to 9,676+ killed and about 46,965 injured (compiled casualty tallies). Iran: 3,468 confirmed by the Foundation of Martyrs, 3,636 documented by HRANA, and up to 6,000+ per US and Israeli estimates, with 15,000 to 26,500 injured. Lebanon: more than 4,000 killed per the Lebanese Health Ministry (which does not distinguish civilians from combatants), including dozens killed in renewed June 19-20 strikes amid repeated ceasefire breakdowns. United States: 13 killed in action and 365+ wounded by official Pentagon count; independent tallies cite 15 killed and 520–543 wounded. Israel: 57 killed. Gulf and other states: Iraq 119+, UAE 13, Kuwait 10, with smaller tolls in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and elsewhere. The US-Iran war is now governed by a signed memorandum (in effect since June 17) with the Strait of Hormuz reopened; the main remaining front is Israel-Lebanon, where a US/Qatar-brokered ceasefire was renewed June 19. Figures are sourced from CENTCOM, the IDF, the Lebanese Health Ministry, Iran's Foundation of Martyrs, HRANA, and verified OSINT; military and civilian counts and source estimates vary widely and are tracked separately. Note: the US-Iran strike cycle continued June 26-28 (US strikes on ~10 Iranian targets; Iran fired drones then ballistic missiles at US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, intercepted with no US casualties). On June 28 the cycle claimed its first death — a Qatari civilian killed by shrapnel from “the military operations witnessed in the region,” with an Arab resident injured (stable). At least one person was also killed in renewed Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon.”

Iranwarlive says it’s independent and AI run.

“IranWarLive is 100% independent and ad-free. There are no corporate backers or state sponsors. However, running state-of-the-art AI models (LLMs) to parse data, alongside the serverless cloud infrastructure that keeps the map updating every 30 minutes, comes with hard monthly costs.”

I’m using it because it is the most current and seems reasonably consistent with other news sites that are three or four months old. The AI part raises some questions though.

Palestine/Israel

Palestinian population in Israel and in Palestinian Territory (Wikipedia)

“Palestine. 5,350,000[1]
– West Bank (Palestine) 3,190,000[1] (of whom 912,879 are registered refugees as of 2024)[2][3][4]
– Gaza Strip (Palestine) 2,170,000 (of whom 1,476,706 are registered refugees as of 2024)[1][5][2][3]
Israel 2,037,000 (2022)[8]”

Israelis (From Wikipedia)

Nationality	Israelis
Major ethnic	Jews (7,208,000, 73.2%)^[1] Mizrahim (N/D) Ashkenazim (N/D) Sephardim (N/D) Other Jews (N/D)
Minor ethnic	Arabs (2,080,000, 21.1%) Arab Muslims (N/D) Arab Christians (N/D) Other Arabs (N/D) Other (non-Jewish, non-Arab) 554,000 (5.7%)^[1]

From Sana: Syrian Arab News Agency

“Occupied Jerusalem, July 16 (SANA) The death toll from Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip has risen to 73,250, with 173,751 people wounded since Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Thursday.
The ministry said hospitals across Gaza received four bodies and 28 wounded people over the past 24 hours, adding that many victims remain trapped beneath the rubble or in areas inaccessible to ambulance and civil defense crews.
The ministry said 1,127 Palestinians have been killed and 3,643 wounded since the collapse of the ceasefire on Oct. 10 last year.”

OCHA, stands for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

“Disclaimer: Figures that are yet-to-be verified by the UN are attributed to their source. Casualty numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Israeli authorities. The fatality breakdowns currently cited are those that the MoH in Gaza has fully identified as of 31 December 2025 out of the higher number of casualties they report. The latest casualty updates are also available on the Health Cluster’s Unified Dashboard.”

Palestinian reported deaths - 73,110; reported Injured - 173,559

Israelis in Israel - 1162. About 1400 reported injuries

Israelis in Gaza. - 474 reported deaths; 3,004 reported injuries

Ukraine-Russia

From Ukrainian Pravda:

“The total combat losses of the Russian forces between 24 February 2022 and 17 July 2026 are estimated to be as follows [figures in parentheses represent the latest losses – ed.]:
approximately 1,425,990 (+1,370) military personnel”

From the Center for Strategic and International Studies (July 2026).

“First, Russian battlefield costs continue to mount, with as many as 450,000 battlefield deaths and 1.4 million casualties between February 2022 and June 2026. These rates are astounding. Russian fatalities in Ukraine are more than four times greater than all U.S. fatalities in all wars combined since World War II, and more than nine times greater than all Soviet and Russian fatalities in all wars combined since World War II.
In addition, Russia’s monthly casualty rates of over 30,000 per month in 2026 have likely exceeded Russia’s recruitment rates of roughly 27,000 new recruits per month. The Russia-Ukraine casualty rate has likely risen to nearly 8:1 in the first half of 2026, up from between 2:1 and 3:1 for much of the war, in large part due to Ukraine’s use of drones—including AI-enabled drones—as part of its aggressive air interdiction campaign.”

Note: These are casualties for Russian soldiers, not all of whom are Russian nationals.

Ukrainian casualties since 2022:

From UN Office of High Commissioner on Human Rights

(Ukrainian) CIVILIAN CASUALTIES SINCE 24 FEBRUARY 2022 = 62,716

deaths = 16,126

Injured = 46,590

From RussiaMatters

“Military casualties (see footnotes for detailed source estimates)
1,000,000 Russian military casualties (killed and wounded), according to a late February 2026 estimate that a highly-informed former high-ranking Western official shared with RM.6
250,000–300,000 Ukrainian military casualties (killed and wounded), according to a late February 2026 estimate that a highly-informed former high-ranking Western official shared with RM.7

Military casualties (see footnotes for detailed source estimates)

1,000,000 Russian military casualties (killed and wounded), according to a late February 2026 estimate that a highly-informed former high-ranking Western official shared with RM.6
250,000–300,000 Ukrainian military casualties (killed and wounded), according to a late February 2026 estimate that a highly-informed former high-ranking Western official shared with RM.7
Civilian fatalities8
Russia: 8,012 “peaceful residents… killed,” according to RF government.

Ukraine: nearly 16,000 civilians killed in Ukraine according to the U.N.”

There are conflicts in various African states, in South America, in Asia which are leaving dead dead bodies and disrupting people’s lives. “Disrupting” - probably is too abstract a word. Devastating, tearing apart, scattering, are some other words. And in a few cases, the loss of an abusive husband perhaps, there is quiet relief.

It's easy to be outraged by the killing of women and children in Gaza, or at the girls' school in Iran. And the civilians in Ukraine. I find myself, rightfully I believe, rooting for Ukraine as they fight to get the invader out of their country. But I also have to remind myself, while watching Ukrainian videos of drones zeroing in on Russian soldiers, that all of those soldiers are also human beings. That many of them were forced to go to fight in Ukraine because their families are poor. A number of the soldiers are even recruited from poor countries and the future soldiers are misled about what they are being recruited for.

It's clear that Putin has no concern for the lives of soldiers fighting for Russia. While I want Ukraine to win, I still have to feel bad for the Russian soldiers being killed for Putin's war.

OTHER CAUSES OF DEATH

While war usually catches the headlines, there are other factors that kill more people:

Traffic deaths

From the World Health Organization:

"Approximately 1.16 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes."

This is a world wide figure. In the US in 2024 it was 39,254

Cuts to USAID funding around the world. - These are harder to quantify. Here's an estimate from a book review of Into the Wood Chipper by Nicholas Enrich, USAID's Bureau for Global Health in 2025. The review tells us that book explains many programs, what they provided, and how cutting them will impact the people relying on them.

"It was a combination of administrative incompetence and malice, and the book illustrates the grim process by which dull bureaucratic procedures can end up killing human beings en masse. Meetings are held, emails are sent, phone calls are made, and something like 520,000 children die of malnutrition, diarrhea, tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV. As the book goes on, it becomes clear it was more the second explanation rather than the first—DOGE’s destruction of the agency was driven primarily by animosity rather than ignorance."

From Boston University School of Medicine: 124,488 Adults and 537,673 children

“ These estimates reflect excess deaths resulting from the US federal government’s discontinuation of USAID funding. Brooke Nichols’ impact trackers suggest that these deaths will continue to rise if USAID funding is not restored. Credit: Impact Counter.”

NPR reports that the Trump administration says that no children have died because of the cuts.

Oxfam has its own discussion of the impacts of the cuts.

The leading causes of death are illnesses - heart diseases, strokes, cancers, and more. While everyone is going to die one day, better health care, better education, and other preventive measures can eliminate some of these illnesses and give people many more years of life.

This post is mainly aimed at people who are isolated (maybe lucky or privileged are better words) enough that they aren't directly and personally affected by war and other causes of premature death in the US and around the world. To document some of the numbers and personalize some of the deaths.

Step 2

What can you do to help more people live their natural lives? I'll address that in another post, soon, I hope. And when I do I'll link to it here.

Meanwhile, get limber in your thinking and in your efforts to make the world a better place. As they say, each dollar adds up. As does each effort no matter how small.

LXXXI

2026-07-24T11:11:16.710-08:00

81 is the square of the sum of its digits

English Language Translations of the Tao Te Ching

"They may have carts and boats
but there will be no need to ride in them;
they may have armor and weapons
but they will never need to display them.
Let the people go back to tying knots for record-keeping;
let their food be savory;
their clothing beautiful;
their customs pleasurable;
their homes secure.
Though they may gaze across at a neighbor's holdings
and hear the sounds of its dogs and chickens,
they will not bother them, coming and going.
They will die of happy old age."
- Translated by Jerry C. Welch, Chapter 81