Homer finds five missed ballots between dividers, and one is still unaccounted for

Five ballot envelopes left out of Homer's city election count last week turned up Monday between the dividers used to sort them. One ballot is still unaccounted for.

Those five and three other ballots were added to the Nov. 3 results Monday. None changed an outcome. Shelly Erickson is still the mayor-elect, and voters still renewed the city's roads and trails sales tax.

The gap surfaced Nov. 6, when the canvass board counted more than 1,000 absentee and other ballots and the tabulator came up six short of what the board expected, according to a memo from City Clerk Amy Woodruff to the City Council. The expected number was the absentee, special needs and questioned ballots issued, minus envelopes that weren't returned or that the board ruled wouldn't count, and minus one borough ballot found in a city envelope.

The board asked Woodruff to review the calculations Monday with its chair to see whether a math error explained the gap. "Five of the six envelopes were located between the dividers used to organize ballot envelopes," the memo says. "One remains unaccounted for."

Two more ballots came from the Kenai Peninsula Borough. Its clerk faxed over two special needs ballots that had been returned by 8 pm on election night, after the borough's canvass board found they belonged to Homer. And a voter who hadn't signed his absentee in-person envelope came back to City Hall to sign it.

Woodruff and the board chair each counted the eight ballots by hand, and the rest of the board reviewed them and signed off on an updated count.

Erickson, a three-term council member and the only name on the mayoral ballot, finished with 1,687 votes, or 95%, for a two-year term. Write-ins drew 87.

Caroline Venuti, with 1,192 votes, and Bradley Parsons, with 997, won the two three-year council seats. Matt Bullard had 660. The eight ballots gave Parsons three more votes and Bullard one, leaving Parsons ahead by 337, the closest margin on the ballot.

Proposition A passed 1,606 to 406, about 80%. It keeps Homer's three-fourths percent sales tax for the Homer Accelerated Roads and Trails program past Dec. 31, 2027, for up to 20 more years. The borough's voter pamphlet puts the tax's budgeted revenue at about $2.3 million a year for building and maintaining roads and trails.

About 40% of Homer's 5,460 registered voters cast ballots.

Certification of the election was on the council's agenda Monday, with the updated count in a supplemental packet. The resolution in the main packet still listed the earlier Proposition A figures, and no minutes have been posted showing what the council adopted. The city's election results page still shows the Nov. 6 count.