Election Mechanics At City Hall Go Smoothly As Assembly Power Appears To Have Shifted

Last year I worked in a polling place for the Municipal election and reported on the election from that perspective.  Things went fairly well until we tried to take the ballots to city hall where things were terribly backed up.  This year I worked at city hall.  Things went much more smoothly.

Station one was at the guard's desk - people signed in (and were marked off on a master list of precincts) and got a checklist that they took to the other stations.

Station 1 near entrance from parking lot

I think this is the first precinct to arrive - Elmendorf's Mt. Spur.  They're fairly close to downtown and they said they didn't have many voters.  They were there about 8:30 pm - 30 minutes after the polls closed.








Station 2 was at the other end of the lobby in City Hall.  Last year there were people lined up outside in the cold waiting to get in (see picture here).
  This year there was much more room inside the building to go to Station 2 where they cut off the metal seals from the Accu-Voter machines and removed the card with the data on it.  The workers wrote down the number of the seal on the checklist and initialed that they'd been checked in.
 

The picture shows them setting up with Station 2 by the third elevator bay.  From there they take their cart back and down a long hallway - which kept things from backing up outside.

Station 3 was the door to the room where the contents of the bags were checked.  I think they took the black bags with the voted ballots and got them stacked up. 

Station 4 was right at that point as well.  At 4 they took the box with the unused ballots.

Finally Station 5 was where they checked and sorted the contents of the big blue bags and the green and red bags inside.  This included things like the tally of the number of voters, number of ballots used, any spoiled ballots, and left over ballots.  All the numbers are supposed to match.  The people at the desks were not asked to check all the math, but to see that things were filled out.  Other items included payroll sheets for poll workers and miscellaneous items like death certificates for people who needed to be purged from the rolls.  (I saw that one had been brought in by someone.)

Station 5 getting ready

Station 5 once things began

Station 5 when things got busier

I worked mainly in the room with Station 5.  There were five desks (two workers per desk) where people could check in their materials. A sixth desk was opened when it got crowded.  But even then I don't think anyone had to wait more than 30 seconds to 45 seconds.  The flow was pretty fast.  None of the long lines from last year.  People were in a good mood, though some were clearly tired from having worked since about 7am.

By about 10:15pm there were only six precincts still out - mostly from the Hillside.  The Alaska Zoo was one.  I think Rabbit Creek was the last one in.  Aside from being far from city hall, they had seven or eight different ballots for people in different road and other districts.  So counting through all their stuff took longer.  By the time I went home - about 10:45pm, all the precincts were in.  All the ballots in the black bags had been moved to the vault upstairs.  All the white boxes with unused ballots had been transferred into the downstairs 'vault.'

It all went smoothly.  There were no rumors about precincts running out of ballots.  No long lines.  That doesn't mean all the paper work is actually correct, but there were no signs of problems that emerged, and I'm guessing there won't be any serious issues.  

And The Results?

While we were busy, we had no news about how the election was going.  It wasn't until I got home that I heard some results.  Even now, a little after 1am, I am only getting results marked 10:23pm.  It says 122 precincts reporting out of 124 (98%).  [UPDATE 6pm: I need to check with the election folks on how to read these reports.  Nathaniel Herz in the ADN reports there were only 122 precincts altogether.  And that there are 6000 outstanding early and absentee votes to count.] Of the two Assembly seats that seemed to be in play, Pete Petersen is ahead of incumbent Adam Trombley by about 300 votes and Bill Evans was about 200 votes ahead of Bruce Dougherty in the south Anchorage seat.  You can see all the Assembly and School District results details here.   For the propositions, you can look here.   If the numbers hold, the conservative 6-5 edge over liberals would be flipped to a 6-5 liberal edge. 

Everything seems to have passed except Proposition 3 which would have fixed the steps and entrance to Loussac Library and done work around Mulcahy stadium.  That was behind by about 300 votes.  It would have added just under $2 per $100,000 property value per year.  The library was packaged with the sports complex at Chester Creek and improvements to the Anchorage golf course. 

Conservative v. Liberal Battle For Anchorage Assembly

There's a one seat conservative edge on the present Anchorage Assembly.  Liberal hopes of changing that lie in districts 5 and 6.  But it's uncertain how things will turn out.  People need to vote.  Non-mayoral municipal elections tend to have very low turnout.  10%-20%.  Just a few people can make a difference.  Changing the majority will mean that developers won't get an automatic pass for everything they want.  The shrink government crowd will have to work harder.  People who ride buses will do better and anyone who is having trouble making ends meet in this economy.  Vote.

Assembly:

District 1 – Seat B – Downtown: Patrick Flynn (L-ish), Mark Martinson (?)

District 2 – Seat C – Eagle River/Chugiak: Bill Starr (C), Sharon Gibbons (L-ish option)

District 3 – Seat E – West Anchorage: Tim Steele (L), Phil Isley (? probably C-ish check for yourself.)

District 4 – Seat G – Midtown Anchorage: Elvi Gray-Jackson (L)

District 5 – Seat I – East Anchorage: Pete Petersen (L), Adam Trombley (C), Mao Tosi (?)

District 6 – Seat K – South Anchorage: Bill Evans (C), Pete Nolan (C) , Bruce Dougherty(L)

 

 

School Board:

Seat C: Liz Ross, Pat Higgins, Dean Williams

Seat D: Don Smith*, Kameron Perez-Verdia

 

*Smith is the candidate who last week blamed all the school district's problems on immigrants, whom he called "imports" as though these people were simply commodities.  He doesn't seem to remember his history since immigrants have flooded this country since, well, before it was a country.  

All the bond issues seem reasonable.

There are bonds for schools, public transit, parks and trails, fire and police, roads and drainage.  You can see them all at the Muni site or the League of Women voters.

Mississippi Is State With Highest Percent of Same-Sex Couples With Kids

I was looking for a good April Fool's story, but I don't think I could beat this real one. 

From a Washington Post story "Helping the black family through gay marriage" came some surprising statistics.

Table From Washington Post

Note:  Nearly all these states have passed constitutional amendments banning same sex marriage, and in some cases, civil unions as well.  Some were overturned by the courts.

Information for the chart below is from Wikipedia.

State	Same Sex Marriage Ban	Same Sex Marriage & Civil Union Ban	Ban Overturned by Court
Mississippi	√
Wyoming
Alaska	√
Arkansas		√
Texas			√
Louisiana		√
Oklahoma			√
Kansas		√
Alabama		√
Montana	√
South Dakota		√
South Carolina		√

The article  mainly focuses on black same sex couples.  It also challenges the belief that gay couples tend to be wealthier than straight couples.  You can read the whole piece here.

Anchorage Spring

Spring doesn't necessarily mean that robins are pulling worms out of warm soil and that green leaves are sprouting all over.

In Anchorage it means that the sun is high enough on the horizon that you can feel its heat and that every day gains five or six minutes of daylight (13 hours and 16 minutes today.)  Sun both melts and evaporates snow, ice art forms again at night.  Here's what it looked like today near Campbell Airstrip.

Cottonwoods reaching skyward, basking in the sun's warmth, 

waking their sweet smelling sticky buds.

 








Campbell Creek still mostly covered by snow below the bridge.

 

The birch sending out its own Morse code messages.  

I'm sure it's profound; if I could only read it.

UCLA IS THE CHAMP - Sports Illustrated Cover Story 50 Years Ago Today

When I was a college student, sports was a big deal.  Probably because I started college when UCLA started winning basketball championships.  When I was at my mom's in LA recently, I found this old copy of Sports Illustrated with the cover story of UCLA's first championship.  It was exciting times.







Here's the article inside.  I saved these as really big files so you can click on the pictures below and magnify them and you'll be able to read them.

Click on the picture and use the magnifying glass and you can read this

To get some perspective, that cheerleader on the right has got to be somewhere between 67 and 72 today.

This is, in no way, intended to take any glory from today's final four.  I just thought it appropriate to post this on the 50th anniversary of the publication.  In fact, I did post on this once, but I didn't have the pictures.  I thought I'd just add the pictures to that post, but since it is the exact day today, another post seemed appropriate.

Cashing In On The New Cannabis Industry

I noticed this ad in the Anchorage Daily News today.

 

From their website: 

Welcome to the Alaska Cannabis Institute and the exciting CannaBiz industry. The opportunity to enter an industry on the ground floor comes around very rarely in most peoples lives.  Many say it is no longer a question of whether cannabis will be legalized in the US, rather a question of when and how it will be legalized. Alaska will vote on August 19, 2014 to allow adults, 21 and older, to own, smoke and buy cannabis while also allowing individuals to grow up to six plants. If passed, Alaska will become the third state to legalize retail marijuana. The Alaska Cannabis Institute is excited to lead the way by providing two-day seminars to educate people about CannaBiz. Day 1 will cover the legalization of marijuana, marijuana tax policy, and the juxtaposition between Alaska and Federal marijuana law and policies. Day 1 also features a comprehensive lecture on setting-up and running a CannaBiz while maintaining compliance. Topics to be covered include: CannaBiz planning, CannaBiz accounting, CannaBiz banking, CannaBiz site location, and more.

Day 2 will present a comprehensive overview on marijuana horticulture and growing. It is so important for anybody getting involved with the cannabis industry to have a broad understanding of how to grow marijuana. The Alaska Cannabis Institute provides: step-by-step instructions on setting up an indoor grow for year-round production, garden calendars and checklists, soil and containers, lights, lamps, and electricity, air, water, and nutrients. Day 2 also examines equipment, seeds, vegetative growth, flowering, harvesting and more.

Medical Marijuana Business Daily has a list of training organizations nationwide and state by state.  Although Alaska is listed, there's nothing listed.  There's no mention of the Alaska Cannabis Institute. 

The Alaska Cannabis Insitute FAQ's under "Where is the ACI headquartered?" tells us it's

"headquartered out of Tacoma, WA. Our parent company is a licensed Limited Liability Company called Pacific Sun West, LLC. Upon sign up, charges on your credit card will be shown as Pacific Sun West. There is a reason for this, which is one of the tips we will discuss in the seminar. Confirm our LLC license status here"

The link doesn't take us to Pacific Sun West, LLC.  It goes to a State of Washington website that lists a company called PENNY HARRISON AND COMPANY.  A link to a Secretary of State page gets us a little more information including a list of officers.

Treasurer MADSEN, BROOKE    BELLEVUE, WA
Vice President   HARRISON, MAX P,   EVERETT, WA
President, Chairman   HARRISON, PENNY L,   EVERETT, WA

An Alaska Dispatch story on Alaska entrepreneurs in getting ready for the initiative to pass, mentions the seminars and quotes someone called Cory Wray.  Looking for Cory Wray is  difficult because there appear to be a number of folks with that name, including a race car driver, and someone who has an online jewelery shop out of Topeka, Kansas/Choctaw, Oklahoma that has a long complaint about it on Ripoff Report.  The Topeka Better Business Bureau has 35 complaints on them.  I don't think this is the same Cory Wray. 

There's a Cory Wray website that offers a few marijuana posters and two hemp products.  The contact information says:

Contact

Tacoma Parkland seattle renton kent pullma Spokane fircrest university place

I'm guessing this is probably the one.

Another FAQ from the Alaska Cannabis Institute:

Alaska laws have not been passed yet, how can you speak on those issues?

Although Alaska policy has not been set, we do know what the Federal policy is. Understanding the Federal policy on MJ; Federal tax policy and 280e; banking regulations and how to troubleshoot them - provides extreme value. We also know Alaska plans to model states like Colorado and Washington when it comes to writing their policy. So, some things we expect AK lawmakers to enact are: setting the minimum age at 21-years-old, tracking from seed-to-sale, and licensing. We will be lecturing on these concepts and more. Also, medical MJ is already legal in Alaska, so we will also cover topics related to the current laws.

The price of the two day seminar is $420.  420 is a code for marijuana.  If the code were 320, would the seminar be $100 less?

I checked one of the programs listed on the Medical Marijuana Business Daily site and I found the Washington Marijuana School  where you can take a two day course for only $300.   But you have to get to Seattle.

Or you can buy a set of videos for $150.

Business Insider has an article called  "Weed Startups in Washington Face Huge Challenges."   I suspect anyone interested should assume that like in the Alaska gold rush, lots of folks participated, but very few made money.  A higher percentage of those selling to the miners probably made money.  And people like this school will probably make more money teaching classes than the participants will make selling marijuana.



[Note to regular readers:  This was supposed to be a quickie post based on the classified ad. I have other posts lined up, but I didn't want to spend the time I thought I needed to do them.  But I could have done one of them given the time this ended up taking.  I think blogging may be a disease.]

Roll Call Reports On Mary Beth Kepner Discipline

Rollcall reported yesterday:

"FBI Director James Comey told a Senate subcommittee Thursday that an agent faced discipline for conduct related to the investigation of late Sen. Ted Stevens.

Comey was ready for a line of questioning from Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski about the FBI’s conduct in the probe of her former Alaska colleague. Murkowski asked for an update from 2012 on allegations made by FBI whistleblower Special Agent Chad Joy about inappropriate conduct by a fellow agent.

“I did learn about this in the last week and get briefed in detail. The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) inside FBI did investigate in response and identified an agent who had engaged in improper conduct there, and the agent was severely disciplined,” Comey said. “The discipline has been imposed.”
Comey was sworn-in as FBI director last September, succeeding longtime director Robert S. Mueller. Mueller previously faced questioning at the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce-Justice-Science about the Stevens case from both Murkowski and then-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas."

I attended and blogged the three trials in Anchorage.  When Chad Joy's so called "Whistle-blowing" document was released, I reviewed it in great detail.  As I saw it, the charges could be broken down into two categories:

1.  How Agent Kepner ran the investigation
2.  Misconduct involving the handling of information at the trial

I found the complaints about the investigation to be about subjective issues of administrative discretion (things like how close do you get to a source and what information do you tell a source) and not about breaking any clear laws or regulations. [In fact, he never cites any laws or regulations or policies that were violated.]

I would also note that there was nothing in Joy's memo that showed concern that the behavior might result in injustice for any of the defendants.  The 'victim' of her alleged misbehavior was Chad Joy himself.  He complained she told witnesses personal information about him and there was a sense that he was worried things would go bad and he didn't want to be blamed. 

I had no way to judge the allegation regarding what happened with information at the trial, but I was struck that he provided few specifics about what he thought had been done wrong.   The only specific details he gave were about a meeting that Kepner had with their key witness in a hotel room which he used to suggest they were having an affair.  I discussed that allegation in depth in this post. 

And here's a post I wrote in November 2010 trying to understand the general context of the investigation itself.

I mention all this because the media coverage has tended to jump all over Kepner and I see this as far more nuanced.  After all, she's the agent who set up the surveillance of Bill Allen's hotel room that revealed how he was managing key legislators' votes regarding changing oil taxes.  The reporting doesn't ring true with my impressions of the agent I had a few opportunities to talk to in some depth.

I don't know what happened.  I recognize that that the FBI and prosecutors in general often have extraordinary power over most defendants and they do a lot of stuff we don't know about to intimidate suspects into cooperating.  I also know that getting information about white collar crime is extremely difficult and without insider informants almost impossible.  And whenever you use informants, lots of tricky issues arise.  And there was some mishandling of evidence.

But the Ted Stevens team had the money and brainpower to take on the FBI and the DOJ and while they lost in the trial, they did 'win' in after trial maneuvering.

Andrew Longstreth quotes Jeffrey Toobin in an The American Law article about two young Jersey attorneys beating the law firm that defended Ted Stevens.  He writes about Brendan Sullivan:

In court, however, Sullivan is often silent during pretrial proceedings. According to a story repeated in legal circles, a judge once asked Sullivan about his lack of involvement during a hearing. Sullivan pointed at the jury box and said: "I work when they work." Arguing pretrial motions is often the job of his partner, Barry Simon.

Longstreth continues:

"There are no school yard fights," says Toobin, who was the junior member on the North prosecution team, about Simon. "Every battle is nuclear warfare. Everything is prosecutorial misconduct." (Sullivan declined a request to speak for this article. Simon did not return calls.) 

Everything is prosecutorial misconduct.  That's part of the Sullivan strategy. The team is good at defending high profile defendants, for very large amounts of money, and forcing the prosecution to make errors.  That's no excuse, but it does shade the story differently than most coverage. 

It's possible that the main offense Kepner committed was to catch Republican legislators, particularly Stevens.  And to interrupt the oil companies' influence in Juneau.  The infractions Stevens committed are dismissed as minor given all the pork he brought to so many Alaskans, but Kepner's infractions are used to define her and all her accomplishments are dismissed.

Cliff Groh, who attended the Stevens trial in DC and believed that Stevens would have been convicted without the evidence that was tainted, in one post cites interviews with jurors who found Stevens not credible.  It wasn't just the recording of Stevens telling Bill Allen

"that the worst they could expect was 'a little time in jail.'” 

I think there's a much bigger story behind all this.  With the prosecutions behind us and Kepner and others in the prosecution team disciplined, the oil companies are once again as cozy with Alaska's governor and legislators as they were before this diversion that Agent Kepner started.. 

Just War and Christianity and Eastern Thought

Matthew Strebe

The basic premise of Matthew Strebe's paper, "Reformulating Warfare:  Just War Theory and Kantian Ethics," was that the theory of just war was created for a very different kind of war than what exists today.


OK, I'm copping out by not giving more details, but I know I wouldn't do it justice.  I should be taking better notes.  I'll check and see if any or all of these papers are online somewhere.



Strebe argues that Kantian ethics better suited to this than utilitarian ethics used in Just War Theory.

Tara Harrington's paper was "Thoughts from a Christian:  Can the World Afford to Practice Wu-Wei When it comes to Our Environment?"


She challenged Lynn White's assertion that  that biblical language about humans dominion over the earth is anti-environmental.







Right now Jacob Land is presenting "Drawing from the Same-Well:  Eastern Thought in Christian Ethics." He's highlighting quotes from Eastern thinkers and the bible.

When I saw Jacob just before this panel, I realized he was the man who was not allowed to carry his backpack on board the plane from LA yesterday.  I thought at the time - when Jacob showed him the backpack fit into the frame they have to test the size of carryons - that the Alaska Airlines rep was being pretty rigid. 

Changing Ed Philosophy in China and Comparison of Aristotle and Xunzu

The first presentation raised lots of issues I've worked on - particularly the conflicts between the rule of law approach to ethics that we pursue that ignores all the other emotional obligations that humans have.

Vivian-Lee Nyitray

I connected to the second for other reasons.




Vivian-Lee Nyitray is the Dean at two Chinese colleges -

Prospect in Chongqin and Taigu in Shanxi - and spoke about introducing more interactive teaching practices in those colleges and her own conflicting moral obligations to her students, her colleagues, and to her mission.  







Having taught in China, I understood her issues of changing the rows of seats into circles so that students were more involved and better able to interact with each other.   

But I only really had to focus on what happened in my class and not try to get other faculty to adopt more participatory teaching methods. 




Though there were some issues that went beyond the classroom - such as how my teaching methods impacted some of the Chinese faculty.  Fortunately, I had support from high in the college and a Chinese teacher who'd studied in the US also worked with me.

Nyitray looked toward Confucian philosophy as a way to work out some of the dilemmas she faced.

Shi Shan

The next speaker,  Shi Shan, was of interest because she's from the university I taught at in Beijing. 










Her presentation made comparisons of Aristotle and Xunzi's definitions of good. 




Unfortunately, trying to blog and listen at the same time is impacting my ability to concentrate sufficiently on some of the papers.



Here's the room we're in.  I know it as the Pub when it first opened here at UAA.  But there was strong local opposition to serving alcohol on campus and so it never has served as a pub.  Now it's called 'the den.' 

 Shi Shan presenting at UAA

"The Good, the Bad, and the Ethical"

That's part of the title of the first paper. 

Bauer and Kelly

I'm at the UAA Undergraduate Ethics Conference in the Pub.  It goes on today and tomorrow and Saturday morning.

This first presentation by Stephanie Bauer and Terry Kelly looked at the conflicts between Ethics and Morality -  a lawyer who has to win and may violate other values to do that.  I'm not going to try to explain what they said, but I'll give you the last couple of slides that summed things up.

I'll let you ponder this.  You don't have to understand it, just let it provoke your brain into thinking.  

I posted the whole program here the other day.  The conference is open to the public and free.  There's a community presentation tonight (Thursday) at East High on ethics and education.  7-9 pm.