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Anchorage election commission reviews hundreds of preliminarily rejected ballots, defers final rulings to evening meeting
Summary
At a work session, Anchorage election staff presented counts and explanations for hundreds of preliminarily rejected ballots — including 455 with no signature match and 197 postmarked after Election Day — and commissioners were told final accept/reject actions will occur at the 5 p.m. meeting.
The Anchorage Municipality Election Commission met in a work session to review preliminarily rejected ballots across multiple rejection codes and hear staff explanations about verification procedures and outreach.
Staff told commissioners the largest single category was Z1 — no signature match on the ballot-return envelope — with 455 ballots flagged after multilayer review by signature-verification teams trained by forensic examiners. "My team has been trained by forensic document examiners, and their determination was that these signatures did not match," Liz, an election staff member, said as she described the criteria used to compare signatures and the cure-letter process.
Staff also presented counts for other categories: 197 ballots postmarked after Election Day (code W, revised from an initial 201 after clerical review), 32 envelopes lacking a voter signature (code Z), 14 ballots where the name did not appear in the state registration database (code X), 10 ballots from voters who registered too late (code T), and smaller groups for inactive voters, empty envelopes, multiple ballots in a single envelope, deceased voters and other irregularities. For example, staff described one envelope discovered after Election Day that contained two ballots (code M), which cannot be credited because it is unclear which ballot belongs to the signatory.
Staff described standard procedures for cure outreach: letters, phone calls and email requests for identification or a photographed ID; staff said many Z1 recipients received cure letters but did not respond. Staff also explained drop-box collection protocols and receipt-stamping practice used to group postmarked or late-received ballots for commission review.
Chair Katie Nolan said the work session was informational and that commissioners would return at 5 p.m. for the formal meeting when they would make motions to accept or reject individual ballots. "This is just a work session where you're looking at the majority of what we have and then you're gonna come back to a meeting where you'll actually make the motions to accept or reject," Nolan said.
The work session did not produce final rulings; commissioners agreed to the staff's reported counts for the work-session review but reserved formal decisions — including any possible referrals related to suspected improper voting — for the scheduled public meeting.
Next steps: staff will provide updated totals before the official session, the commission will hear the municipal attorney and may be asked to make formal motions at 5 p.m., and any cases commissioners believe warrant investigation can be referred to law enforcement or the prosecutor's office for evaluation.
