The policy, added just days after the election workers began tallying results, would require the IT department to authorize use of USB drives on city equipment, which Graham and the observers asserted would include the election center’s equipment.Ī previous report from the Daily News made public the incident, revealing that Dahl had quietly added the policy on the same day that Graham and the two other observers used it.Īssembly Chair Christopher Constant on Tuesday said that the emails prove that Dahl gave Graham the internal policy - and they raise many more questions about what sort of coordination Dahl, Graham and the election observers engaged in, he said. Graham resigned as Bronson’s chief of staff in 2021. It’s also not clear whether Dahl knew that Graham and two other election observers would quote verbatim the policy in the appeal they filed with the city election clerk about an hour later. It’s not clear why Dahl emailed Graham - a member of the public - the internal IT Department policy. The emails showing Dahl’s correspondence with Graham were sent to the Assembly chair by city officials on Monday in response to a public records request. In a July 5 letter, Anchorage Assembly leaders pressed the mayor for answers about the incident and are holding a public meeting Friday to discuss the election complaint. The incident has been the subject of an investigation by the city ombudsman, who received a complaint from someone after the person heard Graham speak during the Public Session of Canvass in May.

The election results ultimately left a moderate-to-progressive Assembly majority in place, which would continue to hold a check on Bronson’s power. It was increasingly obvious that the election was not favoring conservative Assembly candidates when Graham filed an initial complaint, and then when she and two other election observers appealed a few days later on April 11, quoting the new IT policy in an apparent challenge to the city election. They also show that IT staff published the policy statement to the internal web page on April 11 at Dahl’s direction. The batch of internal emails shows that on April 11, the Information Technology Department director, Marc Dahl, sent former chief of staff Sami Graham the policy language and told her that it was published to the city’s intranet on the internal IT security web page.

(Emily Mesner / ADN)Įmails show a top city director emailed Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson’s former chief of staff a newly created internal security policy, hours before she used it to challenge the city’s April 4 election. People walk into City Hall in downtown Anchorage on Oct.

Bronson intranet