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. 

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.

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.

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.

Traini's Back In

It seems my mid town vote matters after all. According to an ADN story by Kyle Hopkins, the Supreme Court has decided that Traini is eligible to run.

I've already written on this extensively. It's unfortunate that the only way, apparently, to clarify the ambiguity in the law, was to legally challenge someone running for office for an 'extra' term. I've looked at the Municipal Charter and at the Muni's hired attorney's opinion, and think that he shouldn't have been eligible. But the reasoning Kyle reports the SC used - when there is a doubt in the law, interpret for the candidate - does make some sense too.

The decision clarifies this for future races, which is good and was clearly necessary. Unless the charter is changed again, 'term' does not mean 'partial term.'

I'm sure all this put a damper on Traini's campaign - as Kyle's post says - and Traini may challenge the election if he loses. I still think it is contrary to the spirit of the term limits. He will have served, if he wins and completes his term, more than nine years.

Election Traini Wreck

Kyle Hopkins at the ADN blog reports that Judge William Morse has ruled that Dick Traini is termed out and cannot run again for the Assembly. That leaves candidate Elvi Gray-Jackson as the only real candidate on the ballot, but Traini's name will also still be on the ballot. Unless, of course, the Alaska Supreme Court overturns Morse's decision.

So, we will see now whether the voters really wanted term limits or just wanted term limits for candidates they didn't like.

I'm not happy with this whole situation. While I'm not a fan of term limits - I think voters should be allowed to vote for any eligible candidate - it is the law. Rather than stepping down gracefully and following the spirit of that law, Traini chose to challenge the law on a technicality (When is a Term not a Term?) saying his first term wasn't a 'full term' and the Muni contracted attorney agreed with him. Now the judge has said the law does not permit him to run again.

This gets messy for several reasons:
1. His name will be on the ballot. (Muni says it's too late to print new ballots. We still have two weeks. I think they mean it's too expensive.)
2. The Supreme Court could overturn the ruling and say he is eligible. If that happens - and he loses the election - do we have another election?
3. He could get more votes than his opponent. In which case the next Assembly person will have lost the election, but won the seat.
4. The people of my district have only one real candidate to vote for.

But I think a challenge was necessary because:

1. The decision will probably affect the School District and Mayor elections too.
2. The Mayor is planning to run for Senate and if he won, would leave office early.
3. If that happened, the person - Assembly President - filling his seat would be faced with the same issue when he/she ran for reelection the second time.
4. Debbie Ossiander has already served more terms on the School Board and Dan Kendall did it on the Assembly, but no one challenged them. This will give us the final answer on whether this is ok.
5. This was a risk Traini took, knowing he could be declared ineligible, and knowing his incumbency would prevent other qualified candidates from putting their hat in the ring.

So, what the Supreme Court rules will clarify the ground rules. It is unfortunate that the only way this can be done is by challenging a candidate who decides to run for a fourth term (for Mayor a third term.)

So, I'm hoping the people in my district will choose Elvi Jackson-Gray, giving her a mandate to be a good Assembly person, and demonstrating that we believe in term limits, we believe in the law, and that we can elect a strong woman candidate who, because of her years as the Assembly budget analyst, is one of the most qualified candidates to run for the Assembly in a long time. [Yes, I have supported her candidacy with a check.] Doing this will clean up a potential mess that Traini's decision to run, the Clerk's decision to allow him to run, and the Superior Court's decision to not allow him to run have all set in motion. Let's get it behind us.

And the Supreme Court's decision on the appeal will let us know what the rules are for the future and, if Jackson-Gray wins comfortably, won't result in a political mess that will cost the residents of my district all sorts of grief. The Assembly and the people of Anchorage have more important work to get done.

Can we act like adults now? Or are we going to try to make this really messy? Yes, I'm sure there are people who think Jackson=Gray or any liberal candidate means the end of the world, but consider what years of Republican dominance have done to this state. Jackson-Gray on the Assembly will be just fine. Your lives won't come crashing down around you.

When is a Term not a Term?

Thursday, February 28, 2008, 10:34pm
The ADN says that Dr. Peter Mjos is challenging the City Clerk's decision to let Dick Traini run for a fourth term because the charter says you can only serve for three consecutive terms. The City Clerk's decision is based on an opinion written by a hired attorney. The attorney concludes that partial terms were not intended to be counted in the term limit provision and since Traini's first term here (he had served prior to that and then was defeated by then future mayor George Weurch if I recall correctly.) There's lots here to chew on.

1. The political consequences of this lawsuit for this race and the next mayoral race
2. How good is the opinion of the hired attorney?

1. Political Consequences

1. For this race. If I understand it right, there are only two candidates. If Traini were deemed ineligible to run, then his opponent Elvi Gray would win. But it also seems to me problematic to have a candidate yanked off the ballot by the courts and for the voters to not have a choice. This could cause a backlash. What if the courts don't finish by election day, and Traini wins. Then the court says he shouldn't have run? The people voted for the term limit provision, but they also would have voted for Traini despite the term limit provision. They would be saying with their votes that the term limit provision doesn't include partial terms.
2. For the upcoming mayoral race. If, in fact, Mark Begich runs for the US Senate, (and that has gotten more likely while I was writing this) and gets elected, a big 'if', he would leave his mayoral position several months before the next mayoral election. If I remember right, the Assembly chair would become acting Mayor. It seems to me better to decide this issue now in an Assembly election than to have it still an open issue if we have a partial term mayor running.


On the one hand, if the law is ambiguous - and if it weren’t the City Clerk would not have asked for an opinion - it should be clarified. But ideally the timing for the clarification should be such that if a candidate is eliminated, others can run for that office. Levesque’s opinion is dated January 7, 2008. I don’t know when the Clerk made her decision or when it was made public - before or after the closing date for candidates to file. To that we must add the time it would take a citizen to decide to file a law suit, since that isn't a casual decision.

On the other hand, are the additional few months Traini served worth depriving his constituents a choice in the election? Shouldn't there be another way to challenge the meaning of the law so it could be done between elections when it doesn’t have immediate consequences on specific people and specific political races?

Does the motivation of the person filing - for political reasons or to clarify the law on principle - matter? Can we ever know the real motivations? Could it be a mix of both? If it is for political gain - to Elvi Jackson’s advantage if Traini were to be found ineligible - one could also say that Traini pushed the limits by running for a fourth term when there was a three year term limit. (He's not the first according to Levesque's analysis - Ossiander did it on the School Board and Daniel Kendall did it on the Assembly. That doesn't make it right, it just means no one challenged them.) Even if the ruling is technically in his favor, it would seem to violate the spirit of the charter. While an attorney’s opinion went in his favor, only a judge’s opinion or a charter amendment could - as I understand it - be legally binding.


2. Levesque's Opinion

Joseph N. Levesque, the attorney who wrote the opinion for the City Clerk concluded

A review of the language used in the MOA Charter term limit provisions reveals that the term limits for elected offices are for either two full consecutive three-year terms or three full consecutive three-year terms. The meaning of the language is clear and unambiguous, partial time served through either appointment or election does not count for the purpose of counting terms. Both the available legislation history and established precedent support this conclusion.

To write that the language is clear and unambiguous seems to suggest that his client, the City Clerk, is a little dim. If it's so clear and unambiguous, why does she have to hire an attorney to tell her that? But an attorney once told me that if he wrote an opinion, it would be a strong, firm opinion, whichever side of the issue he took. So maybe this just reflects that, once Levesque decided it should go for Traini's position, he went for it strong.

How does Levesque reach that conclusion? Partly by logic and partly by referring to the legislative history and intent. The logic doesn't work for me at all. The history and intent - at least the part he refers us to - is more supportive.

The "Logic"

I'll comment on a few things he writes, the whole opinion is here.

Quote 1: (Levesque cites McQuillin whom he describes as "a legal authority on municipal law")

Although an unambiguous statute prescribing the term of an officer will be construed as written, where the legal provisions prescribing the term is [sic] uncertain or doubtful an interpretation will be adopted that limits the term to the shortest time. (p. 2)

So if the Municipal Charter isn't clear on this, we should adopt an interpretation that limits the term to the shortest time possible. That would mean, not allowing someone to run for a fourth consecutive term even if one term was only a partial term. But Levesque comes to the opposite conclusion quoting McQuillin again as saying "the phrase 'term of office'... means the fixed legal period during which the incumbent may legally hold the office."

Do you think the Charter Commission that wrote this language read McQuillin and knew that this was 'the' definition of 'term'? Levesque's opinion talks about 'terms,' 'full terms,' and 'partial terms." Each one uses the word 'term.' But let's move on.

Quote 2: Here Levesque is citing a case called Pope.

"No person shall be elected as a member of the city council for more than two four-year terms..." According to the courts [sic] reasoning, the words 'elect' and 'appointed' have different meanings and a 'four-year term' is not the same as a 17-month term. (pp. 2-3)

But in the Pope case the law specifically said 'elected' and in the Anchorage charter, the word is NOT 'elected' it's 'served.' "[a] person who has served on the assembly for three consecutive terms may not be reelected to the assembly until one full term has intervened."

Note: it says "three consecutive terms" (not full terms) but it also says, "until one full term has intervened." So when they were writing this, they were aware of the difference between full and not full terms. When they wrote about how many consecutive terms someone could serve, they didn't use the word full. But they did use it when they wrote about how much time must intervene before one can be reelected. I would guess this is the precise language on which Mjos is basing his challenge.


Quote 3 - I include this under logic rather than intent, because it is so logically flawed.

Morever, if the intent was for the term limits to include partial terms then language addressing partial terms would have been included. (p. 5)

Don't buy a used car from this guy. You could just as easily make the opposite argument: "If the intent was for the term limits to only be full terms, then language addressing full terms would have been included." This is pure sophistry. And since they did, as I pointed out just above, include 'full term' when talking about how long one had to wait before being elected again, one could logically imagine that they didn't intend the consecutive terms to be full terms or they would have said so.

Since Levesque himself uses the term ‘partial term’ and the charter talks about ‘three year term[s]’ and “two year term[s]” (for mayor), it would seem that the word ‘term’ means time spent serving as assembly member, however long that turns out to be. There could be partial terms, two year terms and three year terms, but all are ‘terms.’ Thus a partial term is a term. The charter prohibits three consecutive terms.


Legislative History and Intent

Levesque cites the original Charter Committee Report #4 and the Charter Review Commission Report to get to the intent of the ordinance. This is after citing legal precedence that legal intent trumps the literal meaning of the law.

He has two citations that logically support his position that one has to serve consecutive FULL terms before term limits apply. (Or should I say "full term" limits apply?)

Intent Quote 1: On page 6 of Levesque's opinion, he cites Committee Report #4:

The charter will limit the Mayor to two successive full terms. A policy question for the Commission is whether a limit on successive terms of Assembly members should be imposed...

He has already decided that what applies to the Mayor regarding full or partial also applies to the Assembly (and School Board) and that from this it means the Commission clearly intended it to mean full terms.

My problems with this are:

1. This is plucked out of Report #4. I'd have to know how many reports there were and what they said (did a Report #6 change its mind?) and read the context of this quote to be sure it means what he says it means. And given some of the other stuff he's written here, I'm not inclined to do that without checking.
2. If the Commission discussed full terms and partial terms and were conscious of this distinction, why, in the end, didn't they say 'full term' when they wrote the Charter? Perhaps at the end, they voted to strike the term 'full.' Of course, I'm playing devil's advocate here. The rest of the context may well support his contention.

Intent Quote 2: On page 8 Levesque writes:

The Charter Review Commission recommended that the term limit provisions be evaluated and voted on by the public, but that any adopted term limits be applied prospectively allowing any incumbent eligibility "to run for two additional full terms."

From this he concludes that they meant (for the Assembly) consecutive 'full' terms. I didn't know you could run for partial terms. And this is talking about what the limbo Assembly members (those serving when the rules were being changed) could do.

It's possible the Charter members did mean what Levesque says the meant, but it isn't possible logically, from these scraps of evidence to jump to the conclusion that Levesque presents:

A review of the language used in the MOA Charter term limit provisions reveals that the term limits for electd offices are for either two full consecutive three-year terms or three full consecutive three-year terms. The meaning of the language is clear and unambiguous, partial time served through either appointment or election does not count for the purpose of counting terms. Both the available legislation history and established precedent support this conclusion.

Personal Note

Anchorage is a small town. Dick Traini was a student of mine and I respect him and have voted for him. But Elvi Gray's positions are closer to mine and I have contributed to her campaign. Furthermore, I know Dr. Peter Mjos and even posted a picture of him on the ski trail not too long ago. I'm also trying to balance my desire to share all I know with my obligations to respect the confidentiality of personal conversations I've had with friends. The rules about sources are being debated for professional journalists, and as a citizen blogger, the trust of my friends and family trumps my obligations to my readers. I don't want my friends to stop talking to me if they fear I'll blog it. If I can find an independent source of information, I might use that but not confidential conversations.

I also don't believe in term limits. I recognize that the system tends to favor incumbents, but term limits imply the public is too dumb to vote right and so we have to prevent them from reelecting someone. But it is the law, and we should follow the law or change it. One way to do that is to challenge it when one has legal standing to do that.



My Conlusion

My conclusion is that this is not clearcut and that a hired attorney is not how we determine law. Getting this to a judge gives us a final decision. But it is also problematic that this decision is coming so late in the game that if Traini were determined to be ineligible, another candidate could not run. I also think that things could get seriously messy if the decision is not final before the election and/or Traini should win and then be declared ineligible. It would put a cloud over Elvi Gray if she got elected that way. It would be better for her to ask the voters, as part of her campaign, to show the meaning of the term limits by voting for her and not voting for a candidate who, if elected, could serve more than nine consecutive years, which would seem against the intent of the term limits.

But I think it will be messier if this issue is not resolved before the next mayoral election when there could potentially be a candidate running who will have served a partial term. If reelected, would that person be able to run for a third consecutive term? (Mayor is limited to two terms.) We need to get this cleared up. Unfortunately, it appears that the only way to do that is to challenge a candidate who is running for a fourth term.

In in the big scheme of things, if someone can serve an extra year, even two, it probably is no big deal. But I don't think that things are nearly as unambiguous as Levesque would have us believe.