Something rotten in Alaska

I just posted a couple of hours ago on the need for voting reform and here's Shannyn from Homer with some very interesting stats from the Alaska election results:

In Alaska, more people voted for George W. Bush in 2004 than for Sarah Palin on Tuesday despite an identical 61-36 margin of victory. Yes. Only four years ago 54,304 Alaskans got off their sofas and voted for Bush, but decided to sit home and not vote for Palin in 2008. In turn, I have to ignore the 30,520 Alaskans who felt progressive enough in 2004 to vote for John Kerry, but weren’t inspired enough to get out and vote for Barack Obama. I would have to glance past the 1,700% increase in the Democratic caucus in February, the 20,991 newly registered voters, and the three largest political rallies in Alaska’s history.

...Try not to remember 12.4% more Alaskans showed up for the August primary as compared to four years ago, before the Palin nomination.

...Four years ago, 313,592 out of 474,740 registered voters in Alaska participated in the election-a 66% turnout. Taking into account 49,000 outstanding ballots, on Tuesday 272,633 out of 495,731 registered Alaskans showed up at the polls; a turnout of 54.9%.

...This year, early voters set a new record. As of last Thursday, with 4 days left for early voting, 15,000 Alaskans showed up-shattering the old record set in 2004 by 28%!

...Not only that, but this historic election both nationally and for Alaska HAD THE LOWEST ALASKA TURNOUT FOR A PRESIDENTIAL RACE EVER!!!

...Pre election polls had both Mark Begich-D and Ethan Berkowitz-D solidly beating incumbents Senator Ted Stevens and Congressman Don Young by at least 6-10 points. Stevens is currently ahead by 3,353 votes with 49,000 ballots left to count. Berkowitz, however, is behind by 16,887 votes; a 51-43 margin. Are we to believe Don Young came from an 8 point average polling deficit to win by 8 points-a whopping 16 point turnaround???

...McCain-Palin was ahead in Alaska pre election polling by as much as 55-40. The Haysresearch Poll that came out Sunday indicated that gap had closed to 2.7 points! Yesterday’s vote contradicts those polls. McCain-Palin won Alaska 61-36! A 25 POINT SPREAD!!! An identical point spread as the 2004 Election.

Much more on historical anomalies at the link. Of course Alaska has a rich tradition of corruption but these sort of inexplivble results happened all over the country. Let me repeat that while we're waiting for the transition, the time is right now to start a push for verified voting. Let's not wait until it's too late again.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]