Corrupt Bastards Club
by digby
If this were coming from anywhere but the state that had legislators who proudly belong to something they called the "Corrupt Bastards Club" (with hats!) I would adopt a wait and see attitude. As it is, I have no problem saying that this stinks to high heaven and is probably exactly what it looks like:
Elections officials, party leaders and voters are wondering what happened this Tuesday in the Last Frontier, where turnout was surprisingly low and two lawmakers who have been the focus of FBI corruption investigations appear to have been reelected despite polling suggesting they would be ousted.
The final voter turnout numbers won't be available until absentee ballots are counted, which could take at least another week. But this year's total is not expected to eclipse Alaska's 66 percent turnout in 2004 or its 60 percent clip in 2000. (This is especially odd given that Alaska's Board of Elections saw a 12.4 percent hike in turnout for the August primaries, before Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was selected as the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee.)
Alaska returns (without the uncounted absentee and contested ballots) show the McCain-Palin ticket garnering 136,348 votes. In 2004, President Bush got 190,889 votes, a "significant disparity", the Anchorage Press reported. "These numbers only add to the oddity of this election in Alaska; in the run-up to Tuesday, Alaskan voters seemed energized to vote for a ticket with our governor on it, despite the barrage of criticism Palin faced."
Couple the dip in support for McCain-Palin with surprising victories for longtime Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who was found guilty Oct. 27 on seven felony charges, and Rep. Don Young, who is under investigation by the FBI, and a lot of pollsters and voters were left stumped.
Pollster Del Ali of the Maryland firm Research 2000, which tracked the House and Senate races in Alaska, said he was "not happy" how the races -- and dead wrong polling numbers -- turned out. Research 2000 had reported in the days before the election that Democratic challenger Mark Begich, an Anchorage attorney, was leading the 84-year-old Stevens by 22 percentage points (Daily Kos apparently paid for the polls).
Other pollsters didn't fare much better. Anchorage pollster and Republican political consultant David Dittman, a Stevens supporter, predicted a "solid Begich win." The national polling firm, Rasmussen Reports, accurately predicted every Senate race in the country within the margin of error in their most recent polls -- except Alaska. Alaska pollsters Ivan Moore, Craciun Research Group and Hays Research Group all also had Stevens and Young trailing in the lead-up to the election.
I wonder when Alaskans are going to reach their limit on this stuff. Contrary to popular myth it isn't actually filled with nothing but "Wasilla Hillbillies." There are many people who love the place for its magnificent wildness and non-conformity, but this is not what they are talking about. It's got a lot of residents who are former military (hence the strong southern, religious contingent) but it is not a homogeneous culture. There are plenty of people who must be utterly disgusted and embarrassed by this.
My former state has taken a battering and the things people believe about it now are quite damaging. It used to be that I would say I was from Alaska and people would be interested and intrigued, some of them very envious. Now people think it's either a laughing stock or a corrupt hellhole. The truth is that it's become a petrostate, similar to Saudi Arabia, run by princes who are made wealthy on oil profits. They need to do something about it.
It makes absolutely no sense that there would be a low turnout in Alaska this time. It was way up everywhere and they had an extremely high profile senate race and the GOP VP nominee was their governor. It's absurd.
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