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.

SB91, Anchorage Assembly, Public Anger Over Crime

I went to the Assembly public hearing Saturday October 8, 2017 to allow the public to give their opinions on Senate Bill 91 which was intended to curb the rise in prison population by cutting back many of the penalties for low level crime and by increasing rehabilitation for those convicted.  

Dick Traini

This is a state law and hearings were set in Juneau, but Anchorage Assembly chair Dick Traini felt most people wouldn’t testify in Juneau and had a special session in Anchorage which was videotaped     
The pictures are most of the people who testified when I was there.  I just wanted people to get a sense of the number of folks and a sense of what they looked like.  But I must say that a number of folks surprised me and reminded me not to judge people by appearances.    Everyone was civil, most were pretty rational and they focused on the facts of their experience with crime and the police response.










I missed the first 20 minutes or so, but what I heard was a lot of . . . anger was there, but mostly it was frustration.

Frustration that the reduced penalties of SB91 for many crimes under $1000 had been put in place, but not the rehabilitation.  So criminals know that nothing can happen to them, that police won’t bother for low level crimes.  Two different people told stories of people regularly taking power tools from big box stores and just walking out and employees are told not to do anything.  They have to just watch them get in their cars and go.  The speakers said this went to barter for drugs and/or other items.  One big box store employee said it happens daily and losses have been in the $800,000 per year range.

Lots of people complained about home break-ins and stolen cars where police didn’t come for hours.  Where they are told on the phone, “There’s nothing we can do.”

There was concern that sex workers wouldn’t report crimes because they, not the criminals would be arrested.

There was also testimony  from people who had served time or the children had and the importance of good rehabilitation to their lives.

Amy Demboski got credit from some for recognizing these problems early on.  And she said she wasn’t for abolishing SB 91, but for fixing it.

One man said there were three things that needed to be done:
1.  Rebuild Neighborhood watch
2.  Put God back into schools
3.  Bring back the death penalty

Most people were rational, had facts, and recognized this was a complex problem .  A few just wanted the repeal of SB 91, but most wanted it fixed - most notably that people convicted of crimes get rehabilitation, job training, and hope and help to find employment when they got out, so they aren't forced back to crime and drugs or alcohol.

There were maybe 100-150 people who were in the chambers during the 4 hour session.  Not that many, but they were all very passionate.  The Assembly listened carefully, sometimes asked questions.

During a break, I asked if there were any police in the room to hear the anger toward the police for not showing up for hours and for saying, “Our hands are tied, there’s nothing we can do” about people who committed crimes.  Later, Assembly Member Chris Constant said there had been a representative of the police department there for a while.

This past Tuesday, the Assembly passed a resolution that didn't call for a repeal of SB91, but did call for fixing it.  From KTUU:

"All members but Amy Demboski voted for changes only, specifically an increase in funding for alcohol and drug treatment, probation, police, corrections officers, and prosecutors.
“I’m afraid if we say repeal this it will not be revisited. I think these were very courageous legislators who did this and I don’t know that we have that now. After seeing this beat up no one is going to touch it again.
We’ll be back to a system that has simply failed and wasn’t working,” said Assembly Member John Weddleton.
The resolution also recommends restoring probation limits for some misdemeanor offenses, time that was cut down to less than a year under SB91. When it came to recommending a full repeal all members but Demboski felt it was better to fix what exists today."

About 5000 Votes Still To Be Counted In Anchorage Election

I talked to the Municipal Deputy Election Clerk (that means she works in the Clerk's office and is the Deputy Clerk in charge of the elections) Amanda Moser this morning.  I had two questions:

1.  How come there were already 2076 votes already posted on the 20:03pm unofficial election results?  [Those results are no longer available online, but I put them up at that link.]  Where were these votes from?

2.  How many votes were still to be counted?

Let me answer Question 2 first.  It's a much shorter answer and comes up again in Question 1. There are about 5000 votes to be counted.  These include absentee by mail that came in yesterday and today (and will trickle in for a few more days), absentee in person, and questioned ballots.  Absentee in person means people voted at one of the polling places, like Loussac library, before the election.  Questioned votes are for people who voted out of their precincts or didn't have ID, or other irregularity that caused the precinct worker to have questions about the voter.

Question 1:  What were those 2076 votes already counted before any of the precincts had brought their boxes to election central?

Amanda Moser told me that these were absentee by mail votes that the Clerk's office had received BEFORE Tuesday.  The office decided that since they had them already, it might be interesting to just get them up right away after the election, so people would have some numbers to look at as soon as the polls closed.  I didn't remember that from previous elections and Moser confirmed they hadn't done that in previous elections.

You can see those early numbers in my first post from last night.  They were much more conservative than the actual outcome.

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 3 - SEAT DPERMAN, Ira 40 11.66%DARDEN, Dustin 11 3.21%CROFT, Eric 114 33.24%TROMBLEY, Adam 178 51.90%Write-in Votes 0 0.00%

Trombley was leading with 51.9% of the vote among these early voters.

In the last count, he got 33% to winner Croft's 45%.

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

This race ended up Traini 62% to Alleva 35%.  Not as big a change.  

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

Gales went from 53% over Dunbar's 45%  in this first set of ballots to Dunbar 60% and Gales 39% in the latest count.  

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

The latest count in this race has Weddleton ahead 43% over Taylor's 40%.  Weddleton leads by 290 votes.  There are 5000 or so votes yet to count city wide.  The total counted so far is 43,000 and this Assembly race had 10,800 votes, just under 25%.  So, there are maybe 1200 votes left to be counted from the absentee by mail and in-person votes.  For Taylor to win, he'd need to get 300 more votes than Weddleton.  It would have to be at least 750 to 450.  Or, put another way, he'd have to pick up 62% of the remaining votes.  (And there was one more candidate in the race I'm not even considering.)   That's highly unlikely.  He didn't even have that big a margin in this early vote that was clearly leaning right.  


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

This one really turned around.  Davis won with 56% of the vote to 42%.  

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

I didn't even know who Kay Schuster was.  Her website is pretty bland.  But there was a Republican Women's fundraiser for her at McGinley's pub with supporters including former Mayor Sullivan.  Nees has run as a  conservative in the past.  

The last count had Schuster with 35% and Marsett with 34%.  

This one is still too close to call.  With 5,000 votes outstanding in this city wide race , Marsett would have to get 40% of the remaining votes.  Not as big a challenge as Treg Taylor has in his Assembly race, but still a formidable challenge.  Particularly if the remaining votes - mostly absentee by mail or in person - have any sort of conservative leaning as the first set of absentee by mail votes had.  


So, either conservatives are more likely to vote by mail, or the Republicans did a better job of getting their voters to vote by mail.  In either case, that first set of votes we got last night had a significantly more conservative tinge than the eventual outcomes.  

Some other issues from yesterday's elections came up in my conversation with Amanda Moser, but I need to review my notes more carefully before I post on that.  It involves aging voting machines and memory cards which caused machines not to read people's cards the first, second, or third times, and required some complete recounting for some precincts.


[Blogger notes.  When I realized that answering Question 2 first made more sense, why didn't I just make that one Question 1?  Good question.  I thought about switching the question numbers around.  But Question 1 really was my first question, the one that got me to call the Clerk's office to ask.  

I'd also note that I did contribute to two of the candidates mentioned in this post.  I know old time journalists got taught that to remain impartial, they shouldn't ever contribute to a campaign.  Some even believe they shouldn't vote.  I already had trouble as an academic about having to use language that imagined that I was some objective observer who had no opinions.  Of course reporters have opinions.  Some can step back and write reasonably objectively and some can't.   I think it's better to just state your biases up front and let the reader consider how that bias might have impacted the story.  

In this case, my reporting on specific races is as objective as it can be - just citing numbers and probabilities.  And where I mention loaded words like ' conservative' and 'liberal,' I'm not voicing any opinion that hasn't been voiced already by people seen as on the left or on the right.  So I don't think it's necessary to mention the specific candidates I wrote checks for.  Readers who need to know, can look it up on the APOC website. I doubt it will be a surprise to regular readers.]

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.

Demboski, Croft, Traini, Dunbar Look Like Winners, Other Races Closer

Demboski, Croft, Traini, Dunbar  look like they are winners.


The South Anchorage race is too close to call.

Bettye Davis is likely the winner in her School District race, the other race is too close.

The Tax proposition is likely to pass - this is the one former mayor Dan Sullivan supported.

The props look mostly yes.  The school bonds are not certain.  The Girdwood proposition looks shaky.  Marijuana tax is a landslide.

You can see the exact numbers for Assembly and School Board here.  And the propositions here.
(These links update, so the numbers you get will depend when you link.  I'm linking now to the 21:57pm edition.)

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%

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%

Assembly Repeals New Labor Law. Mayor Vetoes Their Vote

Anchorage Assembly Meeting - click to enlarge

The Assembly voted 7-4 to repeal Assembly Ordinance 37 which squeaked by last year after Assembly Chair Ernie Hall cut off public participation.  The ordinance pretty much gutted collective bargaining in Anchorage and Ernie Hall nearly got voted out of office by a write in candidate who came within several hundred votes after joining the campaign two weeks before the election.   Some have argued this was similar to the anti-union ordinances that have been pushed by the Koch brothers in places like Wisconsin.  It was a hugely divisive ordinance. 

Tonight, after a lot of testimony, the Assembly voted 7-4 to repeal the old ordinance.  This was possible because Tim Steele was elected over appointed Assembly person Cheryl Frasca and because Adam Trombley and Bill Starr, who both voted for the original legislation, tonight said there were flaws in the bill and they were willing to work with others to make a better ordinance.   Trombley and Starr voted with Dick Traini, Elvi Gray-Jackson, Paul Honeman (who was there by teleconference), Patrick Flynn, and Tim Steele. 

You can see all the Assembly profiles here. 

Mayor Sullivan (r)

However, as soon as the bill passed, the Mayor immediately vetoed it and had his veto already written, printed, and ready to hand out. 

The no votes sounded pretty adamant about their votes and to override the Mayor's veto requires eight votes.



Here's the veto.  I saved it as very big file so you can read it easily if you click on it.

For me the big question is why did Starr and Trombley change their votes?  Both were strongly supported by the mayor and have voted with him on most if not all critical votes.    Both said they were willing to meet with those who so strongly opposed 37 and work out a better ordinance.

Yet I can't help think that after watching how Ernie Hall almost got beaten in the last election - by a write-in candidate no less - that they are looking out for the next election in April 2014 when their terms expire.  They can say to the unions that they voted to repeal the ordinance.  And if they did their homework and counted the votes, they knew that the ordinance would stay in place with the mayor's veto.  Starr comes from Eagle River which tends to vote pretty conservatively, so perhaps that isn't his motive.  On the other hand, I don't know how many union voters live in Eagle River and Municipal elections don't have that much of a turnout usually.  Trombley represents East Anchorage which is a lot more volatile and former state legislator Pete Petersen has already said he was going to run against Trombley.

I generally stay away from Assembly meetings.  The ones I've gone to have sucked a lot of blogger time out of me.  If I went regularly I'd have no time for anything else.  We went to the discussion on democracy and the role of government upstairs, and after we stuck our heads in to see how things were going.   So I'm not completely clear on the timeline of this.  But a petition to repeal Ordinance 37 got enough signatures.   In a video interview I did with Assembly member Dick Traini during a break in the meeting [see below], he said the Assembly plans to put the repeal measure on the April municipal ballot.  He also says the mayor plans to veto that, but he's sure the Assembly will win in court.  The elections are handled by the Municipal Clerk who works for the Assembly, not the Mayor.




But if the ballot included repeal of 37, then a lot of union folks are sure to vote.  Municipal elections - especially when there is no mayoral race - have turnouts under 20%.

So Assembly members Trombley and Starr had some incentive to repeal the measure already.  That would keep it off the ballot and not as many union members would vote.  And this way they can say they already voted to repeal it.

Interesting dynamics.

[UPDATE Jan 18, 2014:  Judge sided with the Mayor on his ability to veto the vote.]

When Is A Conspiracy Not A Conspiracy?

It's easy for people to take a few facts and jump to conclusions.   On election day, a man came into our polling place and exited the voting booth and asked why there wasn't an Assembly race on the ballot.  We hadn't notice that and at first were concerned.  But then we realized not every Assembly seat is up for reelection this year.

But he said that his wife, who has the same address, voted early at Loussac and she'd voted for an Assembly candidate.  We couldn't explain what happened at Loussac, but we checked and found out that he lives in Patrick Flynn's district and Flynn wasn't up for reelection.

But in checking things, I found a link on the Municipal Elections webpage that got me to all the different Sample Ballots (there were about 48 different ballots to take care of all the Local Road Service Area elections) and a list of each polling place which said which ballot was to be used at each polling place.

And as I looked at the sample ballots I saw the candidates for the Assembly races and School Board races.  As you can see, the School Board races are all city wide seats, so they all show up on every ballot.  Some of the Assembly races had only one candidate. (For the sake of space I left out JOHNSON, Jennifer)

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 5 - SEAT H  HONEMAN, Paul Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A SMITH, Don DAVIS, Bettye Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB NEES, David W. CROFT, Eric CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie Write-in

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 3 - SEAT D HALL, Ernie Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A SMITH, Don DAVIS, Bettye Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB NEES, David W. CROFT, Eric CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie Write-in

ASSEMBLY- DISTRICT 2 - SEAT A  MULCAHY, Pete DEMBOSKI, Amy LUPO, SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A SMITH, Don DAVIS, Bettye Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB NEES, David W. CROFT, Eric CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie Write-in

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 4 -SEAT F CLARY,Andy TRAINI,Dick Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A SMITH, Don DAVIS, Bettye Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB NEES, David W. CROFT, Eric CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie  Write-in

HTML Tables

As I looked at the contested races, the candidate order on the ballot  seemed to favor Mayor Sullivan's candidates.

Don Smith was first in his race with Bettye Davis.
Nees was first in his race against Croft.
Mulcahy was first in his race.  (All seemed to be Conservatives and I wasn't sure who was endorsed by the Mayor, but Mulcahy had been appointed to the Planning and Zoning Commission by the Mayor so that seemed a safe bet.)
Clary was first in his race with Traini.

Whoa! I thought.  I knew that the first position on the ballot gets an advantage at the polls, because a certain number of people, if they aren't familiar with the candidates in the race, will just vote for the first one.  The best way to deal with that is to rotate the order on different ballots.  Then each candidate is first on an equal number of ballots.
Not only were the ballots not rotated, but the Mayor's preferred candidate seemed to be on top in each race.

This had conspiracy written all over it.   But first, some of the research on positional advantage on ballots.


From Northwestern University's Kellogg School: 

"Specialists in the mechanics of voting have long recognized that the order in which candidates’ names appear on a ballot influences voters’ decisions. Typically, candidates listed at the top of a ballot earn a greater share of the vote than they would receive in any other position, regardless of their policies and personalities. Now research on voting patterns in local state elections coauthored by a Kellogg School researcher has taken the issue a stage further. It concludes that the first listing on the ballot also increases a candidate’s chances of actually winning office—by almost five percentage points."

Stanford Professor Jon A. Krosnick describes the positional effect and how they've demonstrated it:

"How do we know this? Well, consider this: In California’s 80 Assembly districts, candidate name order is randomly assigned. In 1996, Bill Clinton’s vote tally was 4 percentage points higher in the Assembly districts where he was listed first than in the ones where he was listed last — a difference that persisted even after we took into account pre-existing Democratic registration levels in the districts.
In 2000, George W. Bush’s vote tally was 9 percentage points higher in the districts where he was listed first than in the districts where he was listed last — again, persisting with registration taken into account."

He adds this note which suggests the magnitude of the impact:

"In Florida, for instance, candidates from the governor’s party get top billing, which is why in 2000 and 2004 George W. Bush was listed first on every ballot. (His brother, Jeb, was governor.) "

Other states, he adds, order their ballots in different ways.  Some require rotated positions, some require the previous winning party to be listed first, Minnesota requires the party with the least votes in the previous election to be on top.  Some do alphabetical by party, some alphabetical by candidate's last name. Some random. 


I looked up the state law:

"(6) The names of the candidates for each office shall be set out in the same order on ballots printed for use in each house district. The director shall randomly determine the order of the names of the candidates for state representative for each house district. The director shall rotate the order of placement of the names of candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, United States senator, United States representative, and state senator on the ballot for each house district."

But this gets complicated.  There was a Supreme Court decision in 1998 where a candidate sued the Division of  Elections because he was disadvantaged by having a lower place on the ballot. [If the link doesn't work, start here at the Supreme Court site, link Alaska Case Law Service, then click "By Party Name" and write in "Sonneman"] The case said that the State had switched from rotation to random order with a 1998 amendment.  From the Court's decision:

The amendment was recommended by the Lieutenant Governor's Election Policy Transition Team. Its report stated that the amendment would save “between $150,000 and $250,000 per election cycle.” However, the actual cost of ballot rotation in the 1994 primary and general elections was $64,024. The amendment was also intended to eliminate the confusion of voters who relied on single-order sample ballots and were confused when they found a different rotation of candidates' names on their actual ballots. The team also concluded that “[r]esearch indicates that the order of candidates' names on American ballots does not significantly influence voters.”

Sonneman lost his case.  The Court decided that since the order was random, everyone had an equal chance for the coveted first spot.  I couldn't tell if it had been changed back since and that was why it said rotational in the statute I found.  I was going to see if I could call up Sonneman to see if he knew, but I got his obituary.  I don't have the app that lets me call the departed. 

So I called the Municipal Clerk's office to find out how it was done in Anchorage.  She was ready for that call.

Later, I videoed Deputy Clerk for Elections Amanda Moser explaining how the order is determined so you can listen to hear and/or read below.




Names are placed on the ballot in random order.  They have a written procedure and, in fact, the Clerk, Barb Jones, and her staff, and the Municipal Ombudsman were there as witnesses.  Here's  the procedure:

Procedure for Letter Drawing
Anchorage Municipal Code 28.40.010  Form
C.    The names of all candidates for the same office shall be on one ballot with spaces for write-ins equal to the number of offices to be filled. For each municipal election, the clerk shall determine the random alphabetical order in which the candidates' last names are placed on the ballot, regardless of the office sought, by conducting a chance selection of each letter of the alphabet. The sequence in which letters of the alphabet are drawn shall be the sequence of letters utilized in establishing the order in which the candidates' last names appear on the ballot.

1. Ensure that all 26 letters are present
2. One person will draw a letter from provided container.
3. A second person will read aloud the letter drawn.
4. A third person will record the letter drawn.
5. The fourth person is an observer.
4. Continue until all the letters are drawn.
5. After all letters are drawn the Clerk and other observers will sign sheet provided.
6. The Deputy Clerk will post on the Municipal Website.

And here's a copy of the list they made when they did the drawing.  Note, the date was January 24, 2013.  That's before people filed to run for office.

So, for each race, once they had candidate names, they went through this list.  Any Q's?  No?  M's?  etc.  In one case they had two candidates running for the same School Board seat whose names began with C - Croft and Cornwell-George.  Which should come first?  O comes before R in the alphabet, but they had to use this chart instead of the alphabet.  If you check the list, R is number 20 and O is number 24.  So Croft came first.

And when I looked further into this, I found out that in Eagle River, Demoboski, not Mulcahy was the Mayor's favorite.  And on the ballots with Ernie Hall's race, there were actually two Assembly races because Harriot Drummond had resigned to take her seat in the State House.  In that race, when I checked, Tim Steele's name was before the Mayor's candidate Cheryl Frasca.


So, you ask, if nothing was wrong, why write this post?  A reasonable question.  Here are some reasons:
1.  Don't jump to conclusions. It's always good to be reminded that one should do one's homework and get all the facts before jumping to conclusions, especially negative conclusions.  It reminds us that we see what we are looking for instead of what's actually there.  This is a good example of that and finding out there was no conspiracy, even though, at first glance, my evidence pointed in that direction.  

2.  We should write about good things as well as bad.  When the media only report things that go wrong, we get an unbalanced sense of how the world is.  The Clerk's office had thought through how they were going to do this, wrote up a procedure, and did the order randomly before they even knew who the candidates were.  And when a blogger called them up to check on what they did, they were prepared for me.  Their foresight on this should be recognized.

3.  I had all this information.  I didn't want it to go to waste.  A lame reason, but I'm trying to be honest here.


Final Thoughts

If the bump in votes due to position on the ballot is as big as the research says, then that's a pretty good argument for rotating the names.  But I think the research also needs to tell us if there is a population threshold when it rotating the ballots makes sense.  In my polling place we used less than 20% of the ballots.  Even if the names had been rotated, would we have used enough ballots to get to a different name order?  Should different parts of town get a different order for the School Board races - since they show up on all the ballots?

And I still have to find out what the current state law is - random or rotational? 

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%

[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.