376 Days

Who could have known? Here we are, 376 days later and still no answers about what happened during last year’s GOP primary election in House District 15.

Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, a staunch Republicrat, was facing a challenge from political unknown Aaron Weaver, and dead people, as they usually are wont to do only in places with bigger cemetaries, places such as Chicago, rose up to vote.

Election officials discovered seven absentee ballot applications — seven — from dead people, and absentee votes cast in the names of at least two live people who were very much alive, said they had not voted. Twenty-six ballots were yanked because of residency or legitimacy questions. All the ballots with residency or legitimacy questions were for LeDoux.

Elections officials inexplicably certified the election.

Most of the questions sprang from a single Muldoon trailer park where some of Anchorage’s Hmong community lives. Lots of people appeared to be voting out of only a few trailers. When reporters asked why that was, folks there said, “Ask Gabrielle.”

LeDoux reportedly paid a guy named Charlie J. Chang, of Fresno, Calif., $10,000 to deliver votes from the Hmong community. What Chang, reportedly a translator and political strategist, did remains a question. A few days after the elections, as people were starting to ask questions, LeDoux said Chang was reported dead in California a day or two after the contest.

Weaver was beating LeDoux by three votes in the early vote tally. It was a primary election-night shocker. She went on to won the District 15 primary election 456-339.

LeDoux was not a GOP favorite after she joined the Democrat-led House majority last year and received a powerful legislative post as a reward. The Republican Party backed an East Anchorage write-in candidate, Jake Sloan, a contractor, in the general election, but he lost.

This year, LeDoux broke with the Democrat-led House majority over paying Alaskans a full Permanent Fund dividend.

We, like many of you, wonder why the state could not care less about an obvious attempt to tamper with an election. The Department of Law has said nothing. There is no sign of an investigation, or a grand jury probe or even a moment of passing state interest.

Funny, huh?