The hand recount of votes cast in 15 of the precincts that voted in the April 3 Anchorage Municipal Election is heading into the home stretch. The initial recount is done, but workers are recounting seven races and one full precinct again.
The Anchorage Municipal Clerk's Office has completed their initial hand recount of ballots cast in the messy Municipal Election. Barbara Gruenstein is the Municipal Clerk. She's supervising the hand recount. She says her team finished the count Friday, but found that 7 of the 15 precincts they looked at did not match up, so they are recounting those races again.
“There were seven races where the numbers really did not match the numbers that were in the AcuVote machine, so we're gonna recount them. And then one precinct, we're gonna recount the total ballots again, not the races, because the number of ballots exceeds the number of votes cast in the AcuVote - so there's eight counts all together,” Gruenstein said.
Gruenstein says her team will start on those eight counts at 1:00 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall. Gruenstein supervised the April 3 Municipal Election during which more than half of voting precincts ran out of ballots. Last week the Anchorage Assembly certified the election despite reports of problems with voting machines and of voters being turned away at the poles. In addition, the Assembly chair appointed a retired judge to investigate what went wrong. The investigator's report is due out by June 28. Gruenstein anticipates her office will present a report on the hand recount to the Assembly on May 22.