A new citizen-led petition asks Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer to conduct a detailed forensic audit of Alaska’s 2020 general election. It was launched earlier this week by Mat-Su resident Dave Maxwell who has worked closely with state and elected officials for more than a year to address election problems.

The online petition raises concern about hackers who stole Alaskans’ personal information twice over the past year. The first instance occurred just weeks before the Nov. 3, 2020 election when hackers broke into the Alaska Division of Elections voter registration system – accessing the personal data of 113,000 voters, including the very information needed to request absentee ballots in someone else’s name. This included names, birth dates, last four digits of Social Security Numbers, driver’s licenses, state issued identification numbers, residences, mailing addresses, registered political affiliations and email addresses.

Without a forensic audit, the petition warns that voters will simply lose faith in elections.

Additionally, this past spring a sophisticated cyber attack exposed even more personal information of an unknown number of Alaskans when hackers breached the state’s Department of Health website. This data included names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, driver’s license numbers, health information, financial data and more.

“Stolen identities, which happened twice in Alaska in the last year through the Division of Elections and the division of Health and Human Services will predictably result in stolen elections,” the petition states.

Additionally, the petition observes that Meyers was repeatedly warned to not purchase Dominion voting machines – advice he ultimately ignored. It also claims that the recently approved rank-choice voting system was “forced upon us by a fraudulent 2020 election” in which the Alaska Supreme Court barred the state from following Alaska statute requiring signature verification for mail-in ballots.

While the lieutenant governor has authority to oversee elections, the petition claims that Gov. Mike Dunleavy is “against this petition because he’s hoping to take advantage of rank choice voting to get re-elected.”

Without a forensic audit, the petition warns that voters will simply lose faith in elections. It points to low voter turnout in recent city elections for Palmer and Wasilla as a sign that “voters distrust our systems of government.”

The goal of the petition is to amass more than 25,000 signatures to present to both Dunleavy and Meyer.

Click here to read the petition.

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