Later this year, when Wrangellites go to the polls to elect new local officials, they might see something different on their ballots.
Borough assembly members have traditionally been designated as holding lettered seats. An ordinance approved on first reading at the Feb. 11 borough assembly meeting and slated for a second reading Feb. 25 would eliminate the seat designations. The ballot would instead choose a number of candidates equal to the number of open borough assembly positions from a list, using the phrase “no more than.”
The elimination of the seats wouldn’t in any way alter the way governance is conducted in Wrangell, but would change the way voters and candidates interact with ballots and registration, said Borough Clerk Kim Lane.
Lane has discussed the changes informally since at least the October 2013 elections, and said she isn’t sure how the seat designations came about in the first place.
“They (seat letters) have been based on date, however, looking back in the code, I don’t know if it was ever really supposed to be done according to seats,” she said.
While the seats are unique among municipalities in Southeast Alaska, they’re also cumbersome, Lane said.
“The reason why I wanted to do this is because we’re the only municipality that has seats, other than Juneau,” she said. “It makes better sense to do it this way.”
Juneau’s seats are based on geographic regions of the city, which makes sense given Juneau’s size and population density, Lane said.
The proposed changes would primarily effect regularly scheduled elections with set numbers of candidates, and not elections used to fill assembly positions with unexpired terms, Lane said.
“If there’s an unexpired seat … that would be a separate part on the ballot,” she said.
For example, if regularly scheduled elections meant two assembly positions were open, while at the same time an assembly member had resigned to pursue a Hollywood acting career, voters would face one ballot item for the two regularly opened seats and a separate item to replace the would-be Brando.
The changes are intended to make it easier for voters, Lane said, but could encourage more candidates to run for office.
“Nobody files until the last minute,” she said. “This will eliminate people feeling as though they’re running against people, and instead, they’re gonna feel as though they’re running for the actual seat on the assembly.”
In the past, potential candidates have avoided running for office simply to avoid conflict, Lane said.
“I had a couple people that came in and said ‘Oh, who’s put their name in?’ They saw somebody here and somebody there and they said ‘Oh, that’s good. I’m not gonna run,’” she said. “I don’t wanna see that.”
The proposed changes will also bring the borough assembly elections into line with other publicly elected committees, which don’t have seat designations, Lane said.
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