Dunbar: How Do We Do the Impeachment Plz?
Carol Beecher decides who's a "real" candidate. Legislative Legal Services has been quietly researching who gets to stay a real director.
Oh, now this is spicy. After Undemocratic Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher illegally threw Dan J. Sullivan off the U.S. Senate ballot, Sen. Forrest Dunbar had the Legislature's lawyers researching how to remove an employee from the Division, including the Lieutenant Governor, and whether proceedings could be started during the first special session Governor Dunleavy had called.
I reached out to Senator Dunbar who confirmed the above memo's authenticity.
In reading through the memo and working the timeline of events, it is clear that Dunbar was focused on Beecher's conduct as she had just magically determined that Petersburg Dan Sullivan was not a real candidate, because according to her - a real candidate is someone who "actually wants to win." And thus, election denier Beecher, who isn't sure whether Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, threw retired school teacher Sullivan off the primary ballot.
Then, it was little more than a week and a half later that the Alaska Supreme Court unanimously told Beecher that she had no business divining the intent of the candidate, and ordered Petersburg Dan Sullivan back onto the ballot.
Then, in July, Lt. Gov Nancy Dahlstrom skipped a meeting of the Joint House Judiciary and State Affairs Committee and left Beecher to defend a decision the court had already thrown out! Somewhere in the middle of all that, we learned that roughly 3,000 Alaskans came off the active voter rolls after Beecher sent a list of 15,000 names to the Alaska DMV in March. DMV described this request as being, "non-routine."
Most recently, 23 legislators asked Beecher to restore the voting status of U.S. citizens she wrongly flipped to "inactive status," but has refused to do so, presumably out of fealty to "Ohio" Dan Sullivan who spoke in front of the confederate battle flag last month, and King Donald Trump who, with each breath, espouses election fraud lies.
Now, to be clear, Dunbar's request for information about impeachment doesn't mean anyone is getting impeached. But what the memo does tell us is that a sitting state Senator thought the question was worth putting in writing, during a special session called for something else entirely, knowing full well it would end up in the public sphere.
Reminder: Carol Beecher still runs the Division of Elections, and the primary is August 18. Check your registration status at this link and make a plan to vote!
