Kenai residents who want borough elections to be hand-counted have until 5 p.m. on Jan. 30 to turn in an additional 190 signatures for their ballot petition.

Earlier this month, Duane Edelman, who has spearheaded the petition effort, was notified by the borough clerk that his initiative petition failed to secure the needed signatures to place the hand-count question before voters in the upcoming October election.

Edelman’s team turned in 1,125 signatures on Jan. 9, and needed 954 for approval. However, only 764 names were verified by the clerk’s office. Among the rejected signatures 258 were deemed incomplete or not in the proper form. Another 51 signatures were rejected because the booklets “showed evidence of having been disassembled and reassembled.” The remaining rejected signatures came from unregistered voters, or people who signed more than once.

Now, petition supporters have until Thursday, Jan. 30, to turn in 190 more signatures to ensure voters get a chance to determine the issue in the October election.

“We got an extension of 10 days to get the adequate amount of signatures,” Edelman explained on Jan. 29. “We have been out collecting additional signatures.”

From now until around 2 p.m. on Jan. 30, local residents can swing by Ammo Can Coffee in Soldotna to sign the petition book. Edelman said he’s hoping to get far more than the additional 190 signatures that are needed, just in case some of those get tossed by the borough clerk.

Additionally, Edelman is officially protesting the 258 signatures that were rejected for being illegible or because the names were not a perfect match to the voter roll names, or addresses.

There were problems with addresses, you had to have resident addresses and mailing addresses.

“I can use it as examples for the mayor and the assembly and maybe we can clean up the language in the initiative process,” he said. “Surely the borough clerk can tell that John Smith is Jonathan Smith.

The push to require hand-counting of Kenai Borough ballots began in 2021, shortly after President Trump lost his bid for the White House. At the time, Edelman and others criticized the borough’s practice of using Dominion machine ballot counters – a concern that was echoed across much of the nation by Trump and many conservatives who raised questions about election security issues and ballot tally irregularities.

Hand-count advocates in Kenai are attempting to implement a system similar to the Mat-Su Borough’s new system, which requires that borough ballots be entirely hand counted.

Edelman said he was forced to resort to a citizen ballot initiative after failing to convince the borough assembly to act.

“I was hoping that one of the borough assembly members would sponsor this,” Edelman said. “They could have done this. We tried to get them to do this in May.”

TAKING ACTION

— Registered voters in the Kenai Borough can sign the hand-count ballot petition at Ammo Can Coffee in Soldotna (35559 Kenai Spur Hwy, Soldotna). Those who wish to sign their names can do so during business hours (6 a.m.-5 p.m.) on Jan. 29, and up until about 2 p.m. on Jan. 30.

— The Feb. 4 Kenai Borough Assembly meeting starts at 6 p.m., in the Assembly Chambers (144 N. Binkley Street, Soldotna). For more information on the meeting, click here.

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