Bob Craig: Alaska’s elections need medical-grade security. Here’s the plan.

By BOB CRAIG

July 31, 2026 – My name is Bob Craig, and I am running with Adam Crum for lieutenant governor. I am a US Army veteran. I started my career in healthcare as a front desk clerk at the Veterans Administration and retired as CEO of the Alaska Heart and Vascular Institute. Between those two things, I know what it looks like when the government has a mandate to serve the people who gave everything for this country and falls short at the administrative level. I have seen the gap between what is promised and what is delivered from the inside.

The private sector teaches something government rarely learns: performance is not optional. You meet the standard or you lose patients. You protect sensitive data under federal HIPAA requirements or you face enforcement. You serve your community or you close.

I am a conservative because I believe accountability is what makes institutions worth trusting. Government that actually serves Alaska has to operate the same way: clear standards, real consequences, and no patience for systems that exist to sustain themselves rather than the people who fund them.

Alaska’s voter rolls are sensitive data. The Division of Elections should be run with the same discipline that protects your medical records. Right now, it is not.

Here is what changes on day one of an Adam Crum – Bob Craig administration.

Voter rolls connected to real-time state data. Removing an ineligible voter from Alaska’s rolls currently depends on slow paperwork and manual data entry. When someone dies, the update waits on human follow-up. When someone moves, the correction may never come. The result is a list that grows less accurate with each election cycle. In healthcare, we solved this decades ago: connect the system directly to authoritative data sources and let it update automatically. Alaska’s voter registration database will be connected directly to state death records and official address change systems. Tamper-proof. No manual delays. Names are removed when they should be removed.

Pharmaceutical-grade chain of custody for every ballot. Every pill that leaves a manufacturing facility is tracked from production through distribution to the pharmacy counter. Not because anyone is assumed to be dishonest. Because the standard for something this important is documentation at every step. Alaska’s ballots will meet the same standard. Every mail-in and absentee ballot will be tracked from printing to tabulation using chain-of-custody protocols modeled after pharmaceutical supply chains. Any break in custody will be flagged and investigated.

The decoy candidate loophole, closed. A candidate with no Republican history, no Republican donor record, and no meaningful connection to the party filed for a Republican primary under the same name as the incumbent United States Senator. The Division of Elections accepted the filing. A lengthy formal complaint process was required to resolve it. Alaska should not depend on opposition research to protect the integrity of its ballot. Party affiliation will be confirmed with the relevant party organization before a name is printed on the ballot. The system will not wait for a complaint to catch the obvious.

Ranked choice voting goes. If a voter cannot count the result themselves, the system has failed its fundamental purpose. Elections derive their legitimacy from transparency. Ranked choice voting requires an algorithm to produce a winner. That is a problem. A recent Supreme Court ruling out of Maine found ranked choice voting in a general election unconstitutional. Fourteen states voted it down in the most recent cycle, including Oregon. Alaska should join them. One person. One vote. A result that any Alaskan can verify on a piece of paper.

I bring 30 years of compliance, logistics, and data security experience. That is exactly what Alaska’s election system needs.

Robert “Bob” Craig is a US Army veteran, former CEO of the Alaska Heart and Vascular Institute, and Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska in 2026.  Adam Crum is a lifelong Alaskan, former Commissioner of Revenue and Commissioner of Health and Social Services, and Republican candidate for Governor in 2026. Learn more at AdamCrum.com.