Contributed by John Strasenburgh
The Mat-Su Borough’s October 2nd election ballot includes Proposition B-3, which proposes to change the borough election date from October to November to coincide with state and federal elections. It sounds so simple on the surface… Nothing changes but the date, and we only have to go to the polls once. But, it isn’t simple; the implications of the change are many and far-reaching. Once considered, B-3 is a very bad idea.
This means that the voters would continue to have separate ballots for the state/federal election and the borough election. And there would be two sets of election workers, two sets of ballot boxes, two voter registers to sign and two trips into the voting booth. In some precincts, the two elections might even be in separate locations.
There would also be two sets of workers to tabulate the votes, canvass the absentee and questioned ballots and deal with potential recounts.
Cramming this into one day would create significant problems in the availability of election equipment and of election workers.
As it stands now, the borough borrows the state’s voting machines to run its election. That works well only because the borough and state elections are on different dates. If the elections were on the same date, the borough would have to either buy its own election equipment, at an estimated cost of over $300,000, or incur the potential security risk and logistical problems of continuing to use the state’s equipment.
If the borough decides to continue using the state’s equipment under the B-3 scenario, the only ballots that would go through the voting machines on election day would be the state ballots. The borough would have to hold its ballots and keep them secured and safeguarded until the state releases its machines to the borough. Only then would the borough be able to count its ballots. The delay in counting the ballots is expected to be at least one to two days.
Also of concern is the potential security risk of holding the ballots, uncounted, until the state’s equipment becomes available for the borough’s use. To properly secure the ballots, the borough would need to incur the cost of acquiring additional secure storage capacity.
Yet another problem with the B-3 scenario is the difficulty and cost of recruiting election workers.
Since the borough shares election workers with the state, having the election at the same time would require almost doubling the number of workers in order to staff both elections. A borough election requires roughly 195 election workers and officials. Recruiting and training even half that number (assuming the state and borough share recruitment responsibilities equally) is a tall and expensive order. That’s a lot of recruiting, and it would be costly and likely necessitate more paid workers, and increasing their pay as the borough competes with the state for qualified workers.
In addition, the higher number of inexperienced workers would be expected to create inefficiencies, which translates to longer lines as questions and problems come up and must be resolved in real time.
These are the practical downsides of B-3: increased cost of running elections, inefficiencies, logistical problems, voter inconvenience, delays in ballot counting and reporting and ballot security risks.
Aside from all these extra costs and problems, the underlying principle and the reason that local elections are non-partisan and are held at different times, is that local issues directly affect our day-to-day lives, and these issues deserve our full attention.
Our locally-elected borough representatives make decisions about our roads, emergency services, capital projects and bonding, schools, permitting, parks and trails, and the list goes on. It is our elected officials who determine our property taxes and how these dollars are spent.
If the elections were held on the same date, our local candidates and ballot propositions would be overwhelmed, and I fear lost in the onslaught of advertising and media attention focused on so many candidates vying for votes in so many elections.
We would lose that local focus under Prop B-3, and I think that would be very unfortunate.
I hope you will join me in voting NO on Prop B-3.
Sincerely,
John Strasenburgh, Talkeetna