Anchorage proposal would let clerk start mandatory recounts before elections are certified

Assembly Members Donald Handeland of Chugiak-Eagle River and Sydney Scout of North Anchorage have revised their overhaul of Anchorage's election code so the municipal clerk could recount a close race before the Assembly certifies the election. The revised version goes before the Assembly on Tuesday, with a public hearing Nov. 4.

If a recount is finished before certification, the Assembly would have to consider certifying it before any winner takes the oath of office. Swearing in one candidate, only to swear in another if a recount changed the result, would "create confusion and inefficiency," the sponsors wrote in an earlier memo.

City code now requires the clerk to start a recount within seven days of certification when a candidate wins by less than 0.5%, when second and third place in a race headed to a runoff are that close, when a ballot measure passes or fails by that margin, or when write-in votes must be divided among individual write-in candidates. The revised version would allow the recount within seven days before or after certification, once all ballots are counted following the Election Commission's rulings on rejected and challenged ballot envelopes.

The clerk and Election Team usually know the final count several days before the certification meeting and can run a recount and report it at that same meeting, according to the sponsors' memo on the revision.

That is how it went in April. An automatic recount of the Midtown Assembly seat on April 24 gave Janice Park 5,030 votes and Dave Donley 5,004, a 26-vote margin, with Kim Winston at 397, according to the city's official recount results. The clerk's office scheduled certification of both the election and the recount for the Assembly's April 28 meeting.

The ordinance would also write the Assembly's swearing-in practice into code. State law says newly elected Assembly members take office the first Monday after certification unless a charter or ordinance sets a different date, and Anchorage's code doesn't set one, the earlier memo says. Under the proposal, members would take office immediately after certification "or as soon as practicable thereafter."

The ordinance comes from the clerk's office's annual review of the election code. It would also cut the required newspaper election notices from two to one, end the election center livestream at initial certification instead of nine days later, let only Anchorage residents challenge a candidate's eligibility, and let election workers check ballot envelope signatures against forms on file with the clerk, as Alaska News reported Sept. 30 and Oct. 8. The two newspaper notices typically make up a two-page ad buy costing about $15,000, the sponsors said.

The Nov. 4 hearing is at the Loussac Library. Phone or written testimony requires a form submitted by 5 pm Nov. 3, according to the hearing notice.