ANCHORAGE — A longtime state employee and Republican supporter has been chosen to lead the Alaska Division of Elections, a nonpartisan role.<\/p>\n
Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom announced the appointment of Carol Beecher on Wednesday. Beecher succeeds Gail Fenumiai, who had a long career with the division and retired last year after administering Alaska’s first ranked choice elections. In Alaska, the lieutenant governor oversees elections.<\/p>\n
Beecher began working for the state in 2005 under several Republican elected officials, the Anchorage Daily News reported. She most recently led the state’s child support division. Beecher has been a registered Republican and made contributions to Republican groups and campaigns, including that of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Dahlstrom last year.<\/p>\n
State law says the director of elections and others in key positions in the office “may not join, support or otherwise participate in a partisan political organization, faction, or activity, including but not limited to the making of political contributions.” The law allows the director and other key elections staff to register for a party and express private opinion but not to be officers of a party or political committee.<\/p>\n
Dahlstrom and Beecher did not respond to questions from the Anchorage Daily News. A message seeking comment was sent to spokespersons for Dahlstrom by The Associated Press on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Dahlstrom, in a statement, said Beecher’s “professionalism and extensive experience will ensure that Alaska is ready for the 2024 election cycle and beyond.”<\/p>\n
Beecher said in a statement the division “is dedicated to ensuring secure, accurate and fair elections for all Alaskans and I am confident that this will continue under the lieutenant governor’s leadership.”<\/p>\n
Voters in 2020 approved a new elections process that replaced party primaries with open primaries and instituted ranked voting in general elections. The first such elections were held last year.<\/p>\n
Dahlstrom has said she would not take an active position for or against ranked choice voting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dahlstrom, in a statement, praised appointee’s “professionalism and extensive experience. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":95446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-95445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95445"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=95445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}