How Alaska’s Elections Division Became Swamped With Write-In Candidates

Update: Also, a straightforward narrative from the email tipster.

I thought my buddy Ben Smith at Politico was supposed to be a reporter? Why not do some reporting and tell what actually happened, Ben? It happened right under your nose, my man. I'll lay it out for you below.

At the urging of a local talk radio host, scores of people signed up to be write-in candidates with the Alaska Division of Elections before registration closed….

Dan Fagan, who hosts a popular conservative radio talk show in Anchorage, said that after one listener called in to say he was registering as a write-in candidate, he encouraged others to do the same.

You may remember Melissa Clouthier, she once called you a beltway boy, Ben. heh! She mentioned the idea to me on a phone call, then I called some friends in Alaska to see if it was feasible. I learned we only had 24 hours, so I called my colleagues from Breitbart Media. Ultimately, that led to this Big Government post on the topic.

I sent it to some blogger friends, Ace is one who picked up on it. A reader of Ace's placed a link to the Big Government item in comments at Just One Minute - pointing it out to a resident of Alaska.

Then that JOM reader went down and registered, calling the radio station afterward. They recounted the complete story in comments at JOM. See how easy reporting can be, my friend? h/t JD in email.

She advised me that all entries had to be in by 5 PM today, as Write-Ins must be registered by 5 PM, 5 days prior to the Election. Then I asked, having seen how easy the process was (and free) could I take some extra forms and pass them out to friends and myself bring them back? She said that would be fine and legal.

Immediately I ran to the truck, dialed Fagan on the Radio Show, and told him what I had just done, how to do it easily (where and when) and said I had a form for him in my truck and I would hustle over and drop it off if he wanted to run for Senate. He said no, (weasel:( but then immediately after my call the next 4 or 5 calls were all excited about the idea, and as he started asking questions about the form from some others who had done it, I called back in and read some answers off the form, and he asked me to run it down to the station. I did, plus included a card from the Election Office which had a website and other info. This opened the floodgates. Calls came in from all over, the word got out, and people all over started driving like crazy over to the Office in Anchorage and Wasilla to register. By now also he had found the proper website with the official form, and had posted it and many folks were filling out the form and officially registering via FAX, and then eventually simply via website.

It suddenly turned into a huge party atmosphere, and by the 4 o'clock hour of his show, hundreds of people were flooding the Election Office, and now the news media were sending out teams to the Polling Office to see what the heck was going on. Folks were calling saying stuff like when they walked into the office there were 4 folks in line and by the time I left there were 0 guys behind me. (When I went in it was just me.)