State won't appeal ruling that forces change of ballot

ANCHORAGE - Alaska's lieutenant governor says he will comply with a judge's order to reprint and redistribute all 517,000 ballots with just over a month to go before the Nov. 2 election.

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Extra staff will be needed to complete the task and the old ballots will have to be destroyed. But there should be enough time for the election to proceed normally, said Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, head of the state Division of Elections.

"We're doing everything we can right now to be sure we can conduct the election with integrity," Leman said Thursday.

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Morgan Christen on Wednesday ordered the state to change the ballot after ruling that the summary of an initiative to remove the governor's power to make temporary appointments to U.S. Senate vacancies was inaccurate and biased.

Leman said the state did not plan to appeal Christen's order. He submitted a draft of a new summary to the court on Thursday.

The state must now revise, reprint and resend election ballots across the state, which will take about 15 days and cost $295,000.

"I don't know that Judge Christen understands all the ramifications of an order like this," Leman said. "Quite frankly there are many issues, the elections for offices on the ballot, that are far more important than this ballot measure."

Tom Godkin, an administrative supervisor for the Division of Elections, said the ballots already at regional election offices have been secured, and that they would be destroyed when the new ballots are printed. He said he was confident there would be no scenarios of the wrong ballots being used at polling places, or of far-flung precincts not receiving the ballots on time.

"The same election practices that are used year in and year out are going to be used in the general election," he said. "It's just a matter of reprinting the ballot. The same procedure for distribution is going to be used."

Leman said more than 4,000 advance ballots have already been sent to voters and would not be replaced.

"They've been sent out and I expect people will vote those ballots," he said.

The judge in her order did not address the disposition of those ballots, Leman said. Christen's ruling ordered the state to update its Elections Web site, saying the advance ballots already advised absentee voters to check for changes.

Backers of the initiative, a group called Trust the People, say Leman has fought their proposition every step of the way. Leman twice removed it from the ballot, the first time saying it was unconstitutional and the second time because he said legislative action had accomplished the same thing. The Supreme Court ordered it back on the ballot on Aug. 20.

Currently, the governor can appoint a replacement to a vacant Senate seat. The initiative would abolish appointments and require a special election in all cases except when the vacancy occurs within 60 days of a primary election.

The proposition's summary, as it appeared on the ballot, said the proposition would leave Alaska without full representation in the Senate for three to five months. Trust the People objected to that language, saying it wasn't true and it was partisan, and sued for a restraining order.