State elections officials nearly completed their review of ballots Friday afternoon in the House District 1 election. The two candidates, Republican Bart LeBon and Democrat Kathryn Dodge, remain tied, and with them the balance of power in the entire Alaska House of Representatives. The outcome of this race could alter the course of state legislation for the next two years.
As of the close of business Friday, election officials say one ballot in the race must be further investigated; it may or may not count. If the tie is certified, a recount will be held next Friday. If that comes out the same, and a coin toss or similar game of chance will determine the winner.
The 12-member State Review Board was certifying the results Friday afternoon in Division of Elections’ Juneau office on Friday.
Brian Jackson is an elections program manager, and he’s milling in and out of the fourth floor room where the certification is underway amid cardboard boxes, manila envelopes, sticky notes and what look like receipts from a cash register. Six pairs of review board members were working through stacks of ballots. Jackson is support for the board members.
“This team over here is reviewing ballots from House District 1, very carefully of course for obvious reasons,” Jackson explains. “So what they are doing is quite literally going through each and every ballot, sorting them by who the votes are for, and then they’re counting them. And they count them in stacks of 25, which helps them keep track.”
Most observers’ attention is focused on the pair of women working on House District 1 ballots. Review board members Stuart Sliter and Lynda Thater-Flemmer sound off after visually examining each ballot and tallying it.
“LeBon.”
“LeBon.”
“Dodge.”
“Dodge.”
After they finish a stack of ballots, they take a few questions from observers.
“I don’t know if you want to know the fact that I’m Democrat, and she’s Republican,” Sliter says.
“So we’re bipartisan,” Thater-Flemmer adds.
All six pairs of board members in the room are operating the same way.
And candidate Kathryn Dodge is actually here, too. She’s wearing a name tag that flags her as one of a handful of observers in the room. She’s been watching Sliter and Thater-Flemmer collegially do their thing all afternoon.
“They’re behaving the way we all should be behaving,” Dodge says.
“That’s the way, yeah, that’s the way it should be,” replies Thater-Flemmer.
Dodge says the review board members are being very thorough.
“And they’ve been very good about explaining it, too,” Dodge says. “They just have real interesting, distinct processes that make sure they hand count, that their hand count is accurate, they double-check themselves, and they work well as a team. We just learned that they’re Republican and Democrat, and I didn’t know that either.”
I ask her what her plan is for the rest of the process.
“See what we come out with today, and then — this plan is clearly dynamic,” she says.
She chuckles and says she doesn’t have a return flight booked yet.
