Alaska Elections

Sunday is the last day to register to vote in the November general election.

Regional Division of Elections offices will be open around the state both Saturday and Sunday.

Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell has been on the stump this fall encouraging people to register.

He says it’s often hard to tell how many people are not registered, so Alaska uses Permanent Fund Dividend lists.

“When we compared that list to our voter list, we found about 20,000 people weren’t registered to vote, so that’s pretty good,” Treadwell says.

The Elections Division has been sending Happy Birthday post cards to young Alaskans turning 18, reminding them to register to vote.

Treadwell also has been speaking to high school students across the state, including Juneau, to encourage 18-year-olds as well as those who will be 18 before the Nov. 6 election to register to vote.

“We want to make sure that Alaska’s one of these places where there are no impediments to getting you to register to vote,” he says. “We do have a 30-day requirement and I think that’s important because that allows us to make sure what goes on the books is accurate. We do want to know who you are when you show up to vote, but the voter ID we send out doesn’t have picture on it and you can vote without an ID if you’re known to election officials. You can do a questioned ballot anytime and we’ll check it out later.”

Treadwell says the Division of Elections will be cleaning voter rolls to eliminate those who have moved out of state or are deceased.

Elections Division offices in Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Mat-Su and Nome will be open on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sunday, from noon to 4 p.m.

Registration forms also can be submitted by mail, fax or e-mail to the Division of Elections. Regional office mailing addresses and fax numbers can be found by clicking here.

Merrill Sanford has the inside track to be the next mayor of the City and Borough of Juneau.

The former assemblyman out-polled Cheryl Jebe 55 percent to 44 percent in Tuesday’s municipal election. With about 1,400 absentee and questioned ballots still to be counted, Sanford holds a 660 vote edge over Jebe – 3,334 to 2,674.

“If everything falls as it has in the past with absentee ballots and everything, you probably split those,” Sanford said. “And I think that probably, well, I think that I’ve won.”

However, Jebe said she’s holding out hope that the outstanding ballots will break heavily in her favor.

“I’m just going to wait until they do the absentee ballots on Friday. It’s quite possible that it will continue at the same rate, but you never know,” she said.

Both candidates said they’re proud of their campaigns, and credited each other with running a clean race.

Jebe – who didn’t declare her candidacy until just before the August 13th filing deadline – said she ran for mayor to bring “new energy” to Juneau. She thinks she would have benefited from more time to reach out to voters.

“It took me some time to get going,” Jebe said. “If I had another month, I think the numbers would have been different. I would have had more time to talk to individual people.”

Sanford on the other hand announced his run for mayor in March. After serving on the assembly from 2002 to 2011, he took a year off due to term limits. If his lead holds following the absentee and questioned ballot count, Sanford says his top priority as mayor will be creating a business friendly environment in Juneau.

“I want to try to present the mayor’s office as a pro-economic business climate in Juneau,” he said. “We want people to come here and we want people to open stores here – no matter what the store is – and we want jobs here.”

Sanford said he’ll do that by advocating for better economic planning by the Assembly and by listening to and promoting local businesses.

Juneau voters on Tuesday agreed to an extension of the city’s temporary one-percent sales tax, ensuring at least $34-million in capital projects will be funded borough-wide through 2018. But a $25-million bond proposition to fund another package of projects is still in doubt.

With absentee and questioned ballots still to be counted, Proposition 1 was failing by the narrowest of margins – 3,094 votes against to 3,037 in favor. Meanwhile, the yes votes for Proposition 2 enjoyed a nearly 1,000 vote advantage – 3,573 in favor to 2,599 against.

Assemblywoman Karen Crane chaired the Finance Committee, which crafted the ballot measures. She said she’s not surprised by the too-close-to-call result for Proposition 1.

“The bond issue, I thought that was 50-50 going into that,” said Crane. “I think people took a long hard look at it, and it’s going to be close.”

Assemblyman Jesse Kiehl thinks advocates for specific projects did a good job informing voters about the propositions, especially the sales tax measure. Kiehl said the assembly’s decision to ask voters to approve two funding packages came out of a desire to fund a variety of needs despite limited revenue.

“The attempt was to make them both balanced in terms of basic infrastructure, quality of life improvements, and some economic development improvements,” said Kiehl. “And so the assembly spent a long time working out what would go in which package, and submitted them to the will of the voters. And it looks like at least the bond was a very close call. We’ll see where the voters come down.”

The one-percent sales tax extension will take effect next fall when the current fee is due to expire. Revenue from the tax will pay for nearly 30 projects over a five year period, including $4.7-million for a new Mendenhall Valley library; $4-million for a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Facility at Bartlett Regional Hospital; and $3-million for Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Walter Soboleff Center.

Juneau residents have approved the so-called “project tax” for nearly 30 years, and Crane said the assembly worked hard to make this extension attractive to voters.

“There was a good mix of projects in there and that helps with the one-percent,” Crane said. “So, I’m really pleased that the public’s going to continue to support that.”

If Proposition 1 passes, $10-million in sales tax revenue would be set aside to pay down debt on the bonds, thus avoiding the need to raise property taxes. If the measure continues to fail, that $10-million would go toward upgrades at Aurora Harbor and deferred maintenance at Centennial Hall.

Andi Story and Phyllis Carlson have been re-elected to the Juneau Board of Education. And after a two-year break, Destiny Sargeant will return to the board.

Five people ran for three seats on the school board. Story was the top vote getter with 3,740. Carlson received 2,990 votes, and Sargeant had 2,639. Will Muldoon and Michelle Johnston trailed with 2,094 and 1,660 votes, respectively.

Story is beginning her fourth term on the board. She says stable funding for Alaska’s school districts is her priority. Most of that comes from the state, so she will be lobbying the legislature again next year.

“There have been job losses in the state’s five largest school districts so I think we’ll have more support statewide,” she says. “And that’s the key. Really, its parents, the community realizing that flat funding the budget means cuts to programs and services. It was hypothetical when we were doing the budget cuts in April. Now it’s the fall and people are experiencing what that means and in order to get more revenue, we need to be conveying that to the capital.”

Sargeant served on the school board for one term, but didn’t run for re-election so she would have more time to spend with her children. Now they’re through high school and she’s says she’s ready for the challenge, and it won’t take long to get up to speed.

“I do think there’s a fine balance between the right programs, the right curriculum. And I know we can still have an excellent school system in spite of the budget. I won’t let budgets get us down,” she says.

School board members will be sworn into office on Oct. 16. The board then will be asking for school site council representatives and community members to volunteer for a committee to begin working on the budget.

Newly elected Assembly member Jerry Nankervis says funding for deferred maintenance of city facilities should be in the CBJ budget.

The retired Juneau Police captain received 3,661 votes in yesterday’s (Tuesday) election. He says he heard from a lot of voters during the campaign who don’t like the idea of bonding to maintain city property.

“If the bonding issue stays the way it is right not, that it’s defeated, I believe the city really has to look at incorporating money for maintenance into the budgets for the certain departments so we don’t have to go to a bonding issue. If you’ve got a building you should be maintaining that building,” he says, “before you go out and build more buildings…You’re just digging the hole deeper.”

Deferred maintenance was one of several projects in the bond proposition, which is failing by just 57 votes, but there are about 1,400 absentee and question ballots yet to be counted.

Nankervis will take over Ruth Danner’s Assembly seat. Danner decided not to run for re-election.

Until last Thursday, he was unopposed in the race. Then longtime community activist Dixie Hood filed to run as a write-in candidate. She received 738 votes yesterday, though her name was not on the ballot.

Hood has run for Assembly before and lost, but has served on various city boards and is now a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee. She says reading a news story last week about the history of write-in candidates spurred her to run.

“That inspired me to go for it,” she says.

Loren Jones has been elected to the Juneau Assembly.

Jones will take over the District One seat being vacated by David Stone, who could not run for re-election due to term limits.

Jones closely watched the two ballot measures during the campaign and says he heard a lot of concerns about bonding to pay for deferred maintenance of city facilities. If proposition one fails after absentee and question ballots are counted, he says that will be one of the first challenges the new Assembly will have to face.

“If it’s not funded than we still have that deferred maintenance to try to figure out how to pay for and how to get it done,” he says.

Jones’ personal issue is voter turnout, which was just over 25 percent on Election Day. He says the capital city should do better.

“This is the second year in a row when I’ve left on election night to have less than 30 percent voter turnout, so I want to try to look at what we can do as an Assembly to get a higher voter turnout,” he says. “That may take a couple of years, because you can’t change an election system in one year, but in a couple of years, hopefully we can do something.”

Jones is retired from the state of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, where he worked in the behavioral health field for about 30 years.

This is his second run for Assembly. Last fall, he lost to Carlton Smith by 73 votes then set his sights on another run, while working on the coastal management initiative that failed in the statewide primary.

“About the last 13 to 14 months, I’ve been in some sort of campaign mode. It just feels really good to have it over,” he says.

Even with absentee and question ballots to be counted, he can now settle into a three-year term.

Jones received 3,223 votes on Election Day. His opponent Paul Nowlin had 1,934 votes.

“I thought it went very well. I was surprised to have so many votes to be honest. And I was thinking if I got a thousand votes and I saw that kind of support that I’d give it a go next year,” he says.

Nowlin says he ran for Assembly because he wanted to give back to his community.

“Really that is all I started out to do and then when I started talking to people and hearing their issues, affordable housing, jobs and education really became important to me,” he says. “I’m just very happy with the whole process. It’s been a fun learning experience.”

Nowlin says in the campaign he learned “way more” about Juneau “than he even knew he didn’t know.”