One of the YouTube livestream cameras at the Anchorage Election Center was down from March 5 to April 1 with no explanation.
After inquiries to the Municipal Clerk’s office by the Alaska Watchman, the camera feed was restored within hours, on April 1, without explanation.
The other 16 cameras appear to have been working fine, but camera 10 was blacked out for 27 days with a notice on the livestream stating, “The server has lost connection to the camera.”
On April 11 of last year, the same camera went dark for several hours after working fine previously. Camera 10 points at two tables in the Election Center building. Behind the tables, there occasionally appear to be multiple pallets of incoming ballots.
The Alaska Watchman called multiple times and emailed the Anchorage Clerk’s Office for an explanation as to why camera 10 went dark for nearly a month. As of this publication, there has been no explanation.
Anchorage instituted the live feed surveillance cameras in conjunction with the controversial shift to all-mail ballot elections, which began with the April 2021 election. Before that, Anchorage primarily used in-person voting with some absentee options.
The move to universal mail-in ballots centralized ballot processing at the Election Center headquarters and prompted the need for greater public visibility and transparency into how ballots were received, sorted, and counted.
The multi-camera YouTube livestream is intended to give the public real-time access to the Election Center to mitigate controversy over the mail-in system.
In 2021, the cameras were only on during daytime working hours. By 2022, the feeds were 24/7.
On the morning of April 1, 16 of the 17 Election Center cameras were functioning on the YouTube livestream. They show the loading docks and various points around the inside of the Election Center. Only camera 10 was dark until later that afternoon, when it was restored.
A March 31 public comment on the official Municipality of Anchorage Clerk’s Office Facebook page expresses concern about “camera 10” being down during an active election when ballots are being received and processed. The commenter asked why it hadn’t been fixed, but there were no replies, statements, or updates from officials in those threads or elsewhere.
This is a developing story.
TAKING ACTION
— Click here to contact the Anchorage Clerk’s Office, which oversees elections.
— Click here to contact members of the Anchorage Assembly.
— Click here to contact Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance.
— Click here to watch the Election Center livestream video.
