An Election Recount Board has released the results of a hand recount of the votes cast in 15 precincts during the Anchorage Municipal Election. The Board spent the past couple of weeks checking paper ballots against voting machine results and voter registries. The 12-person Election Recount Board met at City Hall Monday morning to sign off on their report. They found that most precincts were only off by one or two ballots. But Precinct 840 had 205 signatures more than ballots. Municipal Attorney Dennis Wheeler was on hand to explain. “The voters apparently signed the voter register but also signed the question register and had their ballots placed in question envelopes. And we think we have them all accounted for with the exception of eight. It may be, we have some evidence of this, but it may be that those eight persons could not wait in line any longer. And, although they had signed the register, they left without actually casting a ballot, which is why you have more people who have signed than ballots cast,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler said the same was true in precinct 660, where the count was off by six. The recount was ordered by the Assembly after a group of voters petitioned the Clerk’s office for it. The April 3 Municipal Election was fraught with problems. An Election Commission report blamed the Clerk’s Office for not distributing enough ballots. More than half of the precincts ran out of ballots. The Anchorage Assembly has appointed a retired judge to pinpoint what went wrong. His report, due out by June 28, will be used as a guide to improve future elections. Denise Stephens is a member of the recount board. She says the anomalies they found happened because precinct workers did not know how to handle the unusual number and varied types of question ballots that were cast when precincts ran short of normal paper ballots.
Full Article: Anchorage Election Recount Results Show Confusion at Polls | alaskapublic.org.