Fairbanks voters will weigh banning voting machines for hand counts

A citizen initiative on the Oct. 6 ballot would ban voting machines in Fairbanks North Star Borough elections and require every ballot to be hand-counted. Its backers call it a way to save money; its critics say the real driver is distrust of the machines, not the budget.

Proposition 3 would require all borough ballots to be counted by hand and prohibit electronic tabulation. If voters approve it, Alaska law locks it in for two years, beyond the reach of the Assembly or a future vote.

The sponsors are Barbara Haney, a former borough Assembly member now running for the state House as a Republican, and Tammie Wilson, a former Republican legislator. Haney's stated case is fiscal — she argues the borough's contract with its machine vendor, Dominion, now Liberty Vote, is too pricey for a small electorate, and that hand-counting would keep the money circulating among local workers. She points to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which switched to hand counts in 2023.

The cost argument is contested. Election researchers have generally found hand counts to be more expensive, slower and less accurate than machine counts, and the Mat-Su clerk has described that borough's savings as modest and uncertain. And running alongside the fiscal pitch is a familiar theme — Haney has argued that voters should be able to "see" their ballots counted rather than "trust" a machine or a vendor's software, the central language of the national push against electronic tabulation.

Some in Fairbanks see that as the real point. Mayor Mindy O'Neall has called the effort "fear-mongering," saying it builds on national rhetoric that elections are rigged or biased by their machinery, "but there's not evidence that backs that."

Voters must register or update their registration by Sept. 6. A separate measure, Proposition 2, would move borough elections to November.