A grassroots movement to require all ballots in Kenai Borough elections be hand counted took a step forward last week when a ballot initiative group turned in an additional 400 signatures to the borough clerk’s office.

As reported earlier by the Watchman, hand-count advocates had until 5 p.m. on Jan. 30 to turn in an additional 190 signatures for their ballot petition. It appears they have more than enough to put the question to voters in the upcoming October election.

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. 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. The others were rejected for various reasons.

Per borough code, petitioners then had 10 days to make up the lost signatures.
On Jan. 30, Edelman posted an update to hand-count allies.

“Thanks to the efforts of Patriots collecting signatures & Patriots signing our Supplemental Initiative Petition booklets, we needed 190 signatures & we turned in 403 signatures,” he noted.

While Edelman expects that some of the newly-submitted signatures will be tossed, he is confident that his groups turned in more than enough names.

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.

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