Anchorage’s top election official is attempting to defend the city’s novel vote-by-phone policy, after a Nov. 13 New York Times article highlighted concerns and criticisms with the controversial mobile voting system.
The article – “Will People Trust Voting by Phone? Alaska Is Going to Find Out” – notes that Anchorage’s vote-by-phone program allows voters to open a link on their phones to cast ballots in municipal-only elections.
“Even if an all-digital system can be kept secure — which is far from a guarantee — some experts worry that the political environment is too volatile to even experiment with internet voting,” the article states.
It then quotes David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who said he “can’t imagine a worse time in American history” to be using vote-by-phone options.
Becker noted that widespread digital voting could add even more fuel to ongoing concerns about election integrity.
“Imagine what it would be like if we made the conspiracy theorists’ jobs that much easier,” Becker told the NYT. “They can just say the votes got changed inside the machine.”
While the Times’ article accurately described how the vote-by-phone system works, it erroneously stated that Anchorage’s upcoming 2026 spring election would be the first time the city has tried this option.
Anchorage Municipal Clerk Jamie Heinz seized on this error to discredit the Times article.
“Readers of the New York Times have been led to believe the MOA Elections team has embarked on some novel, unsecure agenda on the bleeding edge of integrity in local elections,” she said in a Nov. 13 public statement. “Rest assured, municipal voters: the article is an egregious misrepresentation of MOA Elections.”
The only inaccuracy Hienz points out, however, is the fact that Anchorage first used the novel system this past spring, when the Times stated that 2026 would be the inaugural rollout.
“The [NYT] article claims a new ‘experiment’ will allow all voters to cast ballots from their smartphones,” Hienz noted. “This is factually inaccurate. There are no changes to the options for voters to cast their ballots in the upcoming 2026 Regular Municipal Election.”
Heinz goes on to recount that Anchorage implemented its initial “vote-by-mail” system in 2018, which let voters cast ballots by email and fax, as well as through the mail. Last December, the Anchorage Assembly then expanded those options to permit voters to cast ballots using their smart phones via an online portal, Heinz noted.
Anchorage’s vote-by-phone system utilizes a platform – Mobile Voting Project – that was funded by leftwing venture capitalist, Bradley Tusk.
Tusk, a ranked-choice voting advocate, claims vote-by-phone is essential to combat “political polarization” and increase voter turnout.
Tusk’s political involvement includes serving as campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 New York mayoral race, working as communications director for U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, and serving as Uber’s first political advisor. He also founded Tusk Strategies, a leftwing political consulting entity with senior staff that include high powered political operatives who are closely associated with the Democratic Party.
Heinz said Anchorage’s use of the Tusk-funded system requires voters to provide a personal identifier to maintain election security.
“The MOA Elections Team then activates the voter’s portal,” she explained. “Voters log in using their personal identifier and a unique PIN to complete a virtual ballot by 8:00 P.M. on Election Day. Their virtual ballot is transmitted to the MOA Election Center, where it is printed and processed alongside all other returned ballots.”
While the idea behind mobile-voting is to increase voter turnout, Heinz admitted that few Anchorage voters chose that option this past spring. In fact, of the 60,455 total ballots cast in the 2025 Anchorage election, only 136 chose the new online portal.
Critics of vote-by-phone argue this is a bad time to be tinkering with elections and allowing voters to use their smartphones. In fact, the Mat-Su Borough did away with electronic voting entirely in 2022, and now requires the hand counting of exclusively paper ballots.
Tusk, though, sees mobile voting as the future of elections, according to a recent article in The Tech Buzz.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
“We already do banking, commerce, and private messages on our phones, so why not cast a ballot?” Tusk argued. “If primary turnout is 37 percent instead of 9 percent, the underlying political incentives for an elected official change … It pushes them to the middle, and they’re not rewarded for screaming and pointing fingers.”
The cryptography community, however, isn’t so sure. According to Tech Buzz, crypto security expert Ron Rivest calls mobile voting “far from ready for prime time.”
“Tusk is driven by trying to make this stuff happen in the real world, which is not the right way to do it,” Rivest said. “They need to go through the process of writing a peer-reviewed paper.”
Likewise, computer scientist David Jefferson has argued that “open source and perfect cryptography do not address the most serious vulnerabilities” in mobile voting. The debate hinges on whether “any mobile system can truly protect against malware, man-in-the-middle attacks, and sophisticated state-sponsored interference,” the Tech Buzz article noted.
19 Comments
Bad idea, PERIOD.
Vote by phone “policy” by Anchorage Municipality election official is the worst idea ever. Can’t get up off your ### to go vote? Can’t be bothered to mail in the ballot with a single stamp or drop off your ballot? Then you should not be able to phone your vote in. Just saying. Bad enough we have to deal with mail-in voting instead of in-person.
CUTTING EDGE WAY TO SCREW THE PEOPLE! BRING IT ON! AFTER ALL DUNLEAVYS PROVEN WE HAVE NO CHECKS AND BALANCES!
There wasn’t enough corruption with the mail-in voting and fax, so now the mayor and assembly can really run rough shod over the municipality. Seattle North gets even worse.
As if mailing a ballot is too onerous, now it’s voting by phone? What’s next? Voting by mental telepathy? We already know how mail in voting has been used fraudulently. How about we stop the corruption?
Well does anyone really believe that anything about these installations is a result of a REAL VOTE Count? They are installing the bought and paid for political ACTORS and things like phone/fax your ballot is another cover for the STEAL. WAKE UP AND TAKE BACK ELECTIONS (if we ever had control of them).
How about put it to a vote of the people? This is the same thing they did with mail in ballots, no inquiry of the voters will, just shove down our throats.
That’s Democrats version of Democracy. You don’t get to vote on policy, they’ll do that for you.
“We already do banking, commerce, and private messages on our phones, so why not cast a ballot?” Tusk argued.
His is a false argument: anyone can immediately audit their bank account(s) and purchases visually and quickly. Just how stupid are the advocates for this nonsense?
They’re not, they hope you are.
Let elect our representatives by a raising of hands. You make voting too easy, and next you’ll want 16 year olds to vote. Some people just don’t know when to keep a stupid idea to themselves.
Voting is a serious responsibility. We should not make it so much easy as accessible. The easier things are the less seriously people take them. Paper ballots, with voter ID, cast at a precinct, hand counted at the precinct with the results sent into Election Central. Simple, easy, yielding quick, trusted, results.
Oh Anchorage, I feel so sorry for you. The liberal takeover is almost complete, you’re going down in flames. If you don’t pull up your boots and get out there and vote them out you will never recover, you will be another liberal gutter.
I only want to use my phone to dial 907 222-222222….. The number for Yellow Cab when I’m drunk.
But now I can vote when I’m drunk!
looks like Anchorage is the next Seattle, New York, and the other communist cities.
Thank you, Jamie Heinz, for proving our point about how easily corruptible our election system is, and how much more corrupt it can be.
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You still can’t guarantee voter rolls are current and accurate, but you’ll use them for phone-in voting?
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You’re okay with farming out voter-roll maintenance to ERIC, which seems to run more like a leftist voter registration club fully equipped to sell voters’ private information to third parties?
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You’re okay with “Shutdown” Schumer’s former communications guy running the phone-in scheme? You’re handing over the last morsel of integrity in our election system to him? You don’t know what he’ll do, you’ve no control over what he’ll do, but you just hand Schumer’s guy the keys to our election system, knowing they’re fully equipped to sell voters’ private information to third parties?
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You’ll be doing away with risk-limiting audits? You know, those post-election tabulation audits designed to reduce the risk that reported election outcomes are wrong. You know, the audits that would be done by storing voter-verified paper ballots securely until they can be checked, manually examining a statistical sample of paper ballots until enough evidence is gathered to meet the risk limit?
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Mayoral candidate Bronson got the answer to his question about who stuck a thumb drive into the vote-counting machinery while vote counting was going on …and why the person did it? How will you know when or why someone sticks a thumb drive of unknown provenance into the phone-in vote gear, while it’s counting votes?
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You know what this scheme costs per vote now, or what it’ll cost per vote next election cycle after the “Mobile Voting Project” gets you hooked so they can charge whatever they want? You know, just like ERIC, what keeps the company from getting its hooks into voters’ private data, which they can sell to anyone? How would you know if they did?
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Maybe this is just another sole-source contract sprinkled with kickbacks and job-security guarantees to make it irresistible? No? Can we see your RFP and the other bids?
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Maybe the genius of what you’re defending, Jamie, is that smart-phone voting means Anchorage can have elections every 20 minutes or so, if your Assembly employers wish, which gives new meaning to things like No Tax left Behind. Elections can happen, as often as necessary, until your employers get the desired result, right?
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Maybe the genius of what you’re defending, Jamie, is that hijacking elections starts with gently separating naive young voters from the notion of having to monitor vote-counting. Busy young voters don’t need to monitor elections these days because it’s all done with computers, smart phones, and mail, which is too hard to understand anyway, right?
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Can’t happen here? Hijack and control elections through in-your-face cyber-skulduggery, why not? Rewrite the Charter, squash Eaglexit, make RCV forever, get the 16-year-old vote, ditch term limits, now that’s raw, unstoppable power …the last step in transitioning from representing to ruling, right, Jamie?
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But, never mind all that, voters should trust you to tweak their election system, eliminate the jobs of bipartisan election observers, eliminate the last vestige of transparency because it’s …like really convenient and everyone will vote now because they have smart phones?
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You, Jaimie, did the end-to-end cyber security analysis of the company’s vote-by-phone system? They use block chain? You researched feasibility of using block chain systems in elections, using a permissioned block chain to ensure security? You reviewed and vetted their source code and public documentation showing how their system operates?
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You found –nothing– that would permit a hacker with remote access to the voter’s device to discover or change a user’s vote?
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You found –nothing– to show the company’s server, if hacked, could easily change votes?
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You found –nothing– to show that corrupted voter roll data can –never– be exploited, turned into bogus votes?
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You found –nothing– vulnerable to malware, man-in-the-middle attacks, and sophisticated state-sponsored interference?
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You found the app’s protocol attempts to verify genuine votes with back-end block chain were –always– successful and could –never– be corrupted?
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You found a passive network adversary, like the voter’s internet service provider, or someone nearby if the voter’s on unencrypted Wi-Fi, could –never– detect which way the voter voted?
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You found aggressive hackers could –never– detect how the voter’s going to vote, then block the connection based on that prediction?
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You found –no– voter privacy issues even when the voter’s app uses an external vendor to verify voter ID through the voter’s photo, driver’s license data, or other identification because you know that vendor’s platform is –totally– secure?
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You didn’t? Why, because you don’t know, don’t care, or need deniability? You just trust the company to make everything okay …just like everything’s okay with mail-in voting?
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Deniability? Recall elections in which candidates of certain persuasions somehow struggled ahead and won by the tiniest margins, days or weeks after voting was over? Could a few phone-in votes called in on someone’s behalf have made the difference? But it’s all magic, nobody outside the company knows how the process actually works, so nobody outside the company can be held accountable for how it did work? That’s your deniability, Jaimie?
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You and your Assembly employers don’t seem to care about transparency to ensure election process integrity. Is it because you lot have reason to believe nobody outside your club can, or will, do anything about it?
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You perhaps forgot the election process in states using paper ballots is meant to be transparent so citizens and political party representatives can observe the voting process?
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But Anchorage voters can’t “observe” the process now because the scheme you’re defending is closed-source. That means voters get access to the app itself, but nothing else except whatever –unverifiable– data the company may choose to share. You’ve no independent way of verifying accuracy of company-provided data, do you?
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Making voting more accessible by using internet and mobile-based voting systems may not be a bad thing. One problem is risking election outcomes on systems which are –not– designed and manufactured by experts in secure, transparent voting systems. Another problem is unelected idiots going all in for voting systems which were –never– independently vetted for voter protection and for protection of election integrity.
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In other words, as one source indicated, voting software and systems must be as secure as paper ballots. Surely, Jaimie, you guarantee the phone-in voting scheme is as secure as paper ballots?
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From a researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab: “The biggest issue is transparency. When you have part of the election that is opaque, that is not viewable, that is not public, that has a proprietary component, that part of the system is inherently suspect and needs to be put under a lot of scrutiny.”
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What part of Anchorage’s election system is –not– opaque, and does –not– “need to be put under a lot of scrutiny”?
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Jaime, where’s that scrutiny? Voters should just “rest assured” because Jaimie says voters’ concerns are only “egregious misrepresentation of MOA Elections.”?
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Might be fun watching Jaimie answer questions like these, in the spotlight, under oath, in congressional testimony.
You still can’t guarantee voter rolls are current and accurate, but you’ll use them for phone-in voting?
You know the STATE OF ALASKA has control of the voter rolls right?? You should try some haldol, or thorazine.
Thank you for reading that, you should get a Gold Star or a box of chocolates.
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Yes, the state has control of voter rolls, but clerks can play too. Look at page 29 of the “AAMC Clerk’s Handbook”.
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The state turned over voter-roll maintenance to ERIC, but the complete scope of what ERIC does is concealed from public view by non-disclosure agreement, meaning voters have no assurance voter rolls are current and accurate.
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Anecdotal evidence, news reports, officials’ dismissiveness, and the comprehensive audit support voters’ concern that voter rolls are corrupted.
(https://mustreadalaska.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/DOE-FINAL-REPORT-2025-06-10-01_24_53.pdf)
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ERIC’s founder, David Becker, called the organization “probably the single most effective voter registration effort in history.” He said ERIC forced states to reach out to more than 34 million unregistered voters and at least 5 million or more registered to vote.
It’s no coincidence that the outreach skews to likely Democrat voters. Becker, who runs ERIC, is also Executive Director and Founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), a group that funneled millions of dollars through Zuckerbucks to increase voter turnout in blue districts during the 2020 election.
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The fact that ERIC shares data -collected by states- with third parties like CEIR for political purposes should alarm Alaskan voters and legislators.
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Pennsylvania’s secretary of state demanded ERIC stop sharing data with third parties for get-out-the-vote efforts. Did Alaska’s lieutenant governor do the same?
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Remember the “hooks”? States participating in ERIC don’t use normal procurement processes to assure transparency and efficient use of taxpayer money, so costs predictably blow up. For example, Florida was told their fees could decrease as more states took part, instead their costs went up by 55%.
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You can read about ERIC at https://thefga.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Exit-ERIC-paper-12-12-23.pdf.
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So, to your point, the state has statutory control of voter rolls. ERIC apparently has actual control of voter rolls. The public knows voter rolls aren’t accurate. The Municipal Clerk can check local voter rolls, flag errors, and initiate error corrections, but apparently doesn’t. Technology’s available to do it real-time, but isn’t used.
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Bottom line: The Municipal Clerk still can’t, or won’t, guarantee voter rolls are current and accurate, but apparently will use them for phone-in voting.
Any idea that comes from a guy who advocates for RCV has to be an equally bad idea