What Does The Anchorage Election Mean For The Assembly?

Assembly Seats Up For Election:

Eagle River - Amy Demboski - one of the most conservative Assembly member representing a very conservative part of Anchorage.  She's going to stay in office.

West Anchorage - Ernie Hall - had become a conservative vote and wasn't running again.  He's likely being replaced by  Eric Croft, who is more liberal establishment.

East Anchorage - Paul Honeman was in the liberal team and it looks like he will be replaced by another liberal - Forrest Dunbar.

Mid-Town - Dick Traini who has been on the Assembly longer than anyone else ever - is probably genetically more conservative, but his degrees in public planning and public administration gave him skills to analyze more objectively, and he's been considered a key player among the liberals.  He's going to stay for another term.

South Anchorage -  Jennifer Johnson has been considered as a member of the conservative wing of the Assembly and the race to replace her is close.  But John Weddleton is slightly ahead (91% of the precincts reporting) with 3545 votes (43.40%) to Treg Taylor with 3297 votes (40.36%). Weddleton was very active in the rewrite of Title 21 which set the guidelines for building and development of Anchorage and would be in the liberal side if he wins. Taylor has billed himself as a conservative.
[Next update keeps a similar margin:  Weddleton 3786 (43%) and Taylor 3527 (40%) with 92% of the vote.]
[11:15pm update:  Weddleton edges a little more ahead  4711 - 4421  (43.38% to 40.71%) with 92.3% of the vote in that race counted.  Though I don't think that includes the early and absentee votes.]

So, at this point, three liberals have won seats on the Assembly (a change of one more liberal) and one conservative has kept her seat. The final seat is too close to call.

The new assembly will be either be seven leaning left and four leaning right, or eight leaning left and three leaning right.

You can check for later results on the Weddleton/Taylor race here.  (District 6, Seat J)

And I should say this liberal/conservative dichotomy is a short cut.  But in reality there is a variety of issues that might 'test' someone's location in the political universe.  And politicians are not necessarily predictable on all those issues.

March 2009 Google and Other Search Terms

I put up these posts to highlight the power of internet searches, how they sometimes go poorly astray, some of the more unexpected things people search for, the satisfaction I get when someone appears to have found just what they want, and the frustration when they get close, but don't know how to get the rest of the way. I learn about how people get here and maybe someone reading this will figure out something useful here too.

• what can i do to be more interesting? A reasonable question, but I don't think this person found the answer here. The person got to the November google search page.
  
  
• do federal judges fly on sundays with us marshals I'm sure I didn't have the answer for this, but there was something about Federal Marshals flying with Vic Kohring on Monday.
  
  
• pomegranate phone release india - sadly the pomegranate phone is not a real phone, but I was surprised at the number of people who thought it was. The spot is very well done which is why I posted it originally. This query was from someone in Bombay
  
  
• does the fbi pay for house hunting for new employees - this person got to the post on the FBI complaint by Chad Joy which did not answer the question, but maybe raised a lot of questions the seeker hadn't even considered.
  
  
• what is the thai version of lol - Bingo! Here's someone who got exactly what was sought: lol in Thai.
  
  
• does a yellow shirt go with red shorts - Absolutely, but they didn't get that answer. Instead they got a post on the political implications of redshirts and yellowshirts in Thailand.
  
  
• do americans even know where wales is? This UK browser didn't get the answer either, but at least now knows that the US has a place called Wales too. To Live in Die in Wales Alaska was probably a lot more than the person was expecting.
  
  
• famous people born in pennsylvania with their last name beggining with u (1909) - If this browser, who got to Famous People Born in 1909, searched the page for Pennsylvania, he would have found that David Riesman and Joseph L. Mankiewicz were both born in Pennsylvania, but obviously neither had a U in their last name. The closest we got were a V(elez) and two W's (Welty and Weil) There was also U. Thant. But not from Pennsylvania.
  
  
• how many people are famous for knowing more than one languages - Think about this for a bit. I guess if someone spoke 25 languages fluently, that might be the reason they are famous. I can think of famous people whose knowledge of a second language was much appreciated - such as Jackie Kennedy who could speak French. Anyway, this person got to famous people born in 1909 too.
  
  
• did lady natasha spender home in france burn down - Also got to the same place where there was something on Stephen Spender, Lady Natasha's husband.
  
  
• who is the famous person successful in studying at university more than 1 - This came from a computer using US English in Cambodia. Also got to famous people.
  
  
• elvi gray-jackson's values seems to be affecting policy decisions - Is that surprising? Don't most politician's values affect how they vote on policies? This searcher at least knew how to search the blog for 'elvi-gray-jackson' when she got an archive page full of posts. But what she got was about the election between Traini and Gray-Jackson.
  
  
• know your cranes t shirt - Here's one of those google hits that doesn't work. I had a post on Chiang Mai T shirts (which the browser got to) as well other posts on Sandhill and other kinds of cranes. The browser clicked on a picture from that page Chiang Mai T-shirts. But that got me curious - was there a T-shirt that showed you the different kinds of cranes? So I looked at the google page they got to. Well, the "know your cranes" t-shirt wasn't quite what I was expecting. Nor was the other T-shirt google found.
  
  
• "abie baby" production - A number of people searched for variations of this. I'm not totally sure what they were looking for, but they got to a Lincoln's Birthday post I did with an excerpt from the Anchorage Hair cast singing "happy birthday abie babie".
  
  
• ted the dog hunting for rabbis vidios - I first thought this was some sort of sick anti-semitic joke. But eventually I realized that the searcher had left out the 't' at the end of rabbi. The post he got was definitely not what he was looking for. It was about Ted Stevens and the Seward Sea-Life Center.
  
  
• how do you increase morale in a deli - The wonderful serendipity of googling. In a post called doing what's possible I, by chance, gave some examples, two of which included the magic words

  "If she told you to pick up some bagels in a New York deli for lunch (and you were both in Los Angeles,) you'd laugh."
  "improve the morale and increase production"
  
  

• furniture that hangs from the roof inside - I really wanted to see what this looks like, but couldn't find it. The person did get to see some furniture in Hang Dong.
  
  
• chanot deed - Another bingo, almost. This was not something I expected anyone to be looking up. The search came from Denmark. I had just posted on this Thai form of property deed. So who was looking it up? An NGO worker? A corporation? Or maybe a Dane married to a Thai trying to figure out what happens when they buy property together in Thailand? Or maybe his attorney? Actually the post - on Chanot Chumchon - they got to probably wasn't as useful as a later post on the types of documentation for Thai property.
  
  
• how does the gut in death row work harder - Not sure what this person was looking for, but he got a post on why I think the death penalty shouldn't be reinstated in Alaska.
  
  
• kuala lumpur bird park owl take picture - This is a real bingo (I think, I'm never sure I really understand what people are looking for.) There's a spot in the KL bird park where you can have your picture taken with birds, including two owls. This googler got to that post which included this picture of people getting their picture taken with the owls in the background.
  
  
• steve keudell.blogspot.com - This one disturbs me. Actually, I got quite a few like this. Steve is a farmer in Oregon who got electrocuted when a tree branch fell on a power line. I started getting hits with his name one day and it didn't make sense, so I looked what else they got on google. I found an article about the accident. I've got Steve in my url so sometimes I get people looking for other Steves. So I put up a post about it, with some information about the accident and asked people to let me know if there was a better link for people to get info. They let me know about stevekuedell.blogspot.com. I posted it. But as a new blog (I assume) it wasn't as high up on google's radar as my blog so I kept getting more and more people. So this is someone who had the right url. If they had put it into the url window they'd have gotten directly to the right site. But they googled it instead and got to my site. Which now had a link at the beginning that sent them to the right site where they could get the latest update. And according the sitemeter information, they didn't go to that link. There were a number of hits like this. And others that did go to the better link. It's partly about knowing how to read and paying attention, it's partly internet literacy. And maybe some people didn't want to know more than I had up, even if it was a week old. Here's the most current information on Steve's condition.
  
  
• information on boyfriends cheeting on their girlfriends and the girlfriends pay the price - no comment. Not sure why this blog came up. Here's what their google search showed:
  

What Do I know?: March 2009
... charge less, hurting shops who pay the price of legally and safely disposing of waste. ... schools and a health clinic as well as information on various ...
whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html - 451k - Cached

I can't believe this was the best google could do.

• a day i will never forget in chiang mai zoo with my family - I'm guessing this is of the genre of "Googling to find stuff for the paper I have to write for school". It was US Pacific Standard Time, from a Thai language computer. And they got my post on a day at the Chiang Mai zoo.

Click here for all the other posts on interesting google searches.

Anchorage Assembly Passes Resolution Endorsing Passage of HR763 Energy Innovation & Carbon Dividend Act l

Our local Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) chapter has worked hard on a variety of activities, and one was to get a resolution from the assembly endorsing a carbon fee and dividend law be passed in Congress.  The vote was 8-1.  The lone holdout felt that such a resolution was just a feel-good action that had no effect whatsoever.

Taking from the perspective of just Anchorage, one might say he's right.  Passing the resolution doesn't actual 'do' anything.  But on a larger scale, the Citizens Climate Lobby is asking its local chapters - nearly every Congressional district has at least one chapter - to get such endorsements to give demonstrate support across the country.  Just one city like Anchorage passing a resolution is not a big deal.  CCL gathers all the endorsements and puts them on their website.

If you go to the link, there are lots of individuals, but only a few cities and local governments.  That's because the legislation was just introduced recently and previous city and local governments endorsed the generic idea of a carbon fee and dividend.

So passing a resolution like this is like Anchorage signing a petition.  Just one person alone isn't much, but hundreds or thousands start to make a collective difference.  I want to thank Assembly members Dick Traini, Chris Constant, and Pete Petersen for sponsoring the resolution.

Will it make a difference for our Congressional delegation?  Well, we've been talking to all three for a while now and Sen Murkowski has stepped out on this issue.   But when people around the country look at the list, they will see the largest city in the state most affected by climate change so far has endorsed this legislation.

So that's all I have to say.  But here are two pictures I took today in Anchorage.

One of Campbell Creek off of Tudor a little east of Lake Otis.

And the other is downtown as the blue sky and puffy white clouds reflect off the Atwood Building.

Anchorage Mayor Wins, Gay Rights Lose, And Not Enough Ballots

Not all the votes were in when I left election central at the Denaina Center, but the numbers were pretty clear in most of the races.  But the big topic was that - this is all based on rumor, though I did talk to both mayoral candidates and an assembly member - about 17 -20 precincts ran out of ballots.

The Municipal Code requires that

"For each regular and special election, the municipal clerk shall ensure that ballots are prepared for at least 70 percent of the registered voters within each precinct to present all candidates and propositions to the voters."28.40.010 B

And turnout was significantly lower than that.   I talked with Mayoral Candidate Paul Honeman but didn't get his comments about the balloting on video.  It was not yet 9pm, but already he was significantly behind.



A bit later I talked to the Mayor.


 And finally I spoke to Assembly Member Dick Traini.

58% of Precincts Reporting - Numbers Look More Like Expected

Here's the 21:39 report with 58% of precincts reporting.

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 2 - SEAT A	Votes	Percent
Demboski	1252
Begich	811	39.34%
Write In Votes	12	0.58%
ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 3 - SEAT D
Perman	950	15.52%
Darden	287	4.69%
Croft	2943	48.07%
Trombley	1920	31.36%
Write In Votes	22	0.36%
ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 4 - SEAT F
Alleva	1179
Traini	2041	62.55%
Write In Votes	43	1.32%
ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 5 - SEAT H
Dunbar	2478	59.06%
Gales	1704	40.61%
Write In Votes	14	0.33%
ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 6 - SEAT J
Schimscheimer	497	14.25%
Weddleton	1468	42.10%
Taylor	1498	42.96%
Write In Votes	23	0.69%
SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A
Davis	11,394	57.79%
Hughes	8126	41.22%
Write In Votes	196	0.99%
SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT B
Schuster	6486	34.91%
Nees	5472	29.45%
Marsett	6406	34.48%

[Video Fixed, Sorry] Baseball And Other Value Sources Of State House Candidate Andy Josephson

My goal was to interview pairs of candidates running against each other with a focus on what their personal values are and how those values might affect the decisions they would make if elected to the legislature.  It seems to me their basic values are more revealing than asking questions about current issues.

I thought I'd start with the two candidates running for the House in my district - the new district 15.

Basically this is Northern Lights on the north, Pine and Boniface on the east, Tudor to Elmore to Dimond on the south, and New Seward, MacInnes, LaTouche on the west. 

I thought it would be fairly easy because I knew both candidates.  I've known Democrat Andy Josephson's father, not well, for a long time.   Dick Traini, the Republican, graduated from the Masters of Public Administration program 25 years ago and had been my student.  He's told me that his education has given him a much broader view of local politics and an understanding of the balance of public and private interests than he would have had.  He's also been my local Assembly member for a long time.  (Assembly is a non-partisan office and Dick has been a registered Independent until fairly recently.)  I've voted for him, though in this race I did contribute to Josephson's campaign.  Dick knew that but he agreed right away to participate. I was able to get Andy's done fairly quickly.  But Dick's Assembly obligations got in the way and we weren't able to schedule a time to do the video.  Before I left for LA I let Dick know I was going to proceed without his video, since there wouldn't be enough time before the election when I got back. 

Andy Josephson

Basically, my idea was to probe the candidates to find out what their basic human values were, where they came from, and how they would affect their legislative decisions.

I wasn't going to edit - I would just let it run as they spoke.  That way there'd be no issues about my trying to make one candidate look better than another.  (It also would be a little slower than the video people normally see on television where there are lots of cuts, where the pauses are edited out, etc.)  I did start the interview and then stopped it and started over as the candidate - who is not used to doing video interviews - got a better sense of things.  He was also tapping the table and causing the camera to jiggle.  I've left out the original beginning.  Other than that, this is just what he said.

I've marked different parts of the video so you can jump to topics you want to hear. Click on the dots on the video bar at the bottom of the video screen.





Basically, Andy Josephson's values are influenced strongly by American culture;  by family, including playing baseball (starting about 2:40); and from friends.  His response to how he would decide on legislation starts at about 5:40 and is worth watching. This includes advice from trusted mentors who have more experience in the legislature than he has, the reality of time and needing to prioritize bills by importance, how it affects his district and what his constituents care about.    I asked how he'd handle demands from his party that conflicted with his values. I also asked if there were any dealbreakers - issues that he felt too strongly about to compromise.

So this will be my experiment on this.  I don't have a problem with something being entertainment as long as it's also substantive.  But when doing political videos, editing raises questions of whether I'm tyring to bias the video, so I've left the video pretty much what he said without editing.

I left out, as I said above, his first attempt at this.  The point was for him to feel comfortable and to express himself as well as he could without spending a lot of time.

I'd also say that he hasn't seen the finished product and thus has not approved or disapproved of it. 

Political Graffiti

We walked past this sign Wednesday night.  It seems someone felt Clary's connection to the Anchorage Baptist Temple deserved some recognition on his signs.

And when I checked the spelling of 'graffiti' I found this do-it-yourself graffiti creator site.  This just popped out of my finger tips.  It just seemed right to play with their "Kodiak' style.  [UPDATE March 8, 2014:  I went back to the diy site today and I can't find the page where I created the image below.  Now it looks like you have to buy it all.  Graffiti artists need to make a living too.  But you can go to fontmeme where you can generate your own graffiti in different fonts and colors.]

From the Muni Election page:

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 4 -SEAT F Total Number of Precincts 25 Precincts Reporting 23 92.0% Times Counted 6178/35860 17.2% Total Votes 6055 CLARY, Andy 2506 41.39% TRAINI, Dick 3497 57.75% Write-in Votes 52 0.86%

Assembly Work Session Hears Judge Hensley Again on Voting Problems

I went to the Assembly work session today with Judge Hensley, the consultant who investigated the problems with the April 3, 2012 Municipal election.

I got there twenty minutes late.  Actually, I thought this was going to be a two hour follow up on the earlier working group with Assembly attorney Julia Tucker.  So I was surprised to see Hensley and most of the Assembly there.  Hensley was finishing his report as I arrived and then took questions.  There was no amplification and the Judge spoke softly facing away from the audience.  Plus something (heating?) was making a lot of noise. The whole meeting took about 30 minutes.  You can listen to the Municipal recording of the meeting.  [You have to go to Archived Videos and Agendas.  Hensley's Report Worksession is at the top today, but will move down as new videos are added.  You can also try one of these:

MP3 Audio

MP4 Video

(there's only audio on the video)]

The written report and the supplemental can be found:


June 30, 2012 Report 
July 24, 2012 Report

You can see other documents relating to the April 3, 2012 election at the Municipal Clerk's election page.

Hensley's Report Overview:

He said his first question was to determine if someone tried to manipulate the outcome of this election.  The answer is no.

Second task, if no one intentionally tried, how did it happen?  Someone took their eye of the ball - leadership in the Clerk's office for sure and while the Assembly had the right to expect the Clerk to run the elections well, clearly the Assembly needs to keep some oversight.  


Basically felt that the key problem was the failure in ballot allocation in not realizing that turnout would not be like 2011 or 2010.

I don't really think that there was anything terribly significant said that you couldn't find by just reading the reports.  The audio is just 29 minutes so if you really want to know, you can listen to it. 

I didn't feel the Assembly was particularly deep in their questioning.  Flynn did ask about the variety of ballots (there have to be different ballots because there are so many small special service districts that have elections.)  Johnston asked about training for workers.  Traini, Drummond, and Jackson-Gray asked about the voting machines. 

New metal seal for ballot bags and voting machines

After the meeting I spoke with the Clerk and a staff person.  One change they have worked out already is to get more secure seals.  They are metal and it will be very clear if they are tampered with and they are numbered so people can't simply replace them with another tag.  (I believe someone said the old plastic ones were also numbered.)  They are also hoping to reconstitute the Technical board to hand count random ballots for at least three precincts. 

Citizen Group on Election Meeting Now with Assembly Attorney

I'm at the City Hall listening in a a meeting between the Citizens Group that ponied up the $1500 to pay for the recount of 15 precincts from the April Municipal election.

This post is being written on the fly.  So bear with they typos.  Plus I got to this meeting late because I had a previous meeting so I might have missed something that happened before I go here.  The meeting is still going on. 

People here include  most of the Citizens Group folks,  the Assembly attorney Julia Tucker, the Municipal Clerk-to-be Barb Jones, and two other employees of the clerk’s office who have worked on elections, and two Assembly members - Harriet Drummond and Dick Traini - and a representative of the ACLU.  








The citizens group presented a 110 page report of concerns and recommendations to make future municipal elections more secure.

It will be interesting to compare this report created by volunteers who paid, as a group, $1500 to have the election recounted, to the official report the Muni is paying up to $30,000 for.  I understand the two reports aren't reviewing exactly the same thing.  

There were six different topics identified in newsprint on the wall:

1.  Accuvote issues


2.  Protocols for
    a.  recount
    b.  ballot accountability
    c.  Precinct stamp to track ballots and questioned ballots by precinct
    d.  determining # of ballots by precinct
    e.  Training
    f.   procedure for hand count






3.  Title 28
    a.  ballot accountability report
    b.   determining # of ballots by precinct
    c.   Election worker/trouble shooter training
    d.   28.50.090  suspect qualifications
    e.   % of precincts that should be counted by hand
    f.    Recount - absentee and Questioned ballots 
          28.90.040C  needs to conform and make sense with the code
                 clarify “separate precinct” when they are pooled
4.  Questioned Ballots
    a.  to be counted by precinct or race
    b.  if precinct, then machine count or hand count?
    c.  what is NOT a questioned ballot?
    d.  numbering questioned ballots envelops
    e.  if by precinct, then
        1.  where voted
        2.  where actually reside

5.  Value Issues
    a.  Security, space, organization
    b.  Ballot bag review
    c.  Public observers/Tech for machine programming
    d.  Ballots should be numbered/ not stub only

I must say that the tone in this room is very open and people are listening to each other and asking serious questions about the problems being raised and how to resolve them in the future.   I've got some video which is not comprehensive, but which does give a sense of the tone of the meeting.

Very First Anchorage Election Returns Show Conservative Surge

It's not clear what these votes represent.   It says 0.0% of 124 precincts reporting.

So, are these early votes?  There really aren't enough of them and in the past these have been counted after all the other votes were counted.

Did someone hack the machines and get things primed with a starting bias?  (Just asking questions that pop into my mind.)  I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation.  But let's get the starting numbers documented.

This is for 20:03 pm - so no votes have even had time to get downtown to the election headquarters yet.

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 2 - SEAT A
DEMBOSKI, Amy 253 72.49%
BEGICH, Nicholas 94 26.93%
Write-in Votes 2 0.57%

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 3 - SEAT D
PERMAN, Ira 40 11.66%
DARDEN, Dustin 11 3.21%
CROFT, Eric 114 33.24%
TROMBLEY, Adam1 78 51.90%
Write-in Votes 0 0.00%

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 4 - SEAT F
ALLEVA, Ron 111 39.78%
TRAINI, Dick 164 58.78%
Write-in Votes 4 1.43%

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 5 - SEAT H
DUNBAR, Forrest 188 45.97%
GALES, Terre 219 53.55%
Write-in Votes 2 0.49%

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 6 - SEAT J
SCHIMSCHEIMER, Mark 76 13.82%
WEDDLETON, John 170 30.91%
TAYLOR, Treg 301 54.73%
Write-in Votes 3 0.55%

SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A
DAVIS, Bettye 840 44.03%
HUGHES, Brent 1050 55.03% Write-in Votes 18 0.94%

SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT B
SCHUSTER, Kay 693 37.77%
NEES, David 604 32.92%
MARSETT, Starr 519 28.28%




[UPDATE: Here is the first report for the propositions.]

PROP 1 ANCHORAGE SCHOOL DISTRICT CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS
YES 746 35.93%
NO 1330 64.07%
PROP 2 MARIJUANA SALES TAX
YES 1703 81.37%
NO 390 18.63%
PROP 3 AREA SAFETY CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS
YES 1243 59.13%
NO 859 40.87%
PROP 4 PARKS & REC CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT
YES 907 43.33%
NO 1186 56.67%
Prop 4 Parks and Rec Capital Improvements
YES 766 44.07%
NO 972 55.93%
PROP 5 ARDSA STORM & DRAINAGE
YES 1059 50.36%
NO 1044 49.64%
Prop 5 Ardsa & Strom and Drainage Bonds
YES 805 52.72%
NO 722 47.28%
PROP 6 ANCHORAGE FIRE SERVICE AREA FIRE PROTECTION BONDS
YES 1276 60.56%
NO 831 39.44%
Prop 6 Anchorage Fire Service Area Protection Bonds
YES 1203 60.67%
NO 780 39.33%
PROP 7 ANCHORAGE METROPOLITAN POLICE SERVICE AREA FACILITIES BONDS
YES 1101 52.35%
NO 1002 47.65%
Prop 7 Anchorage Metropoliain Police Service Area Facities
YES 1093 52.40%
NO 993 47.60%
PROP 8 TAX INCREASE LIMITATION
YES 1444 69.56%
NO 632 30.44%