If you live in Anchorage, you may want to double check your Assembly precinct before voting on Tuesday. The Anchorage Municipal Clerk’s office says redistricting has shifted the boarders of precincts in three areas of the city.
Amanda Moser is the Deputy Clerk of Elections at the Anchorage Municipal Clerk’s office. She says this past year, the Assembly declared the districts did not adequately represent the population, and in November they drafted and approved new Assembly district maps. Moser says voters in three main areas could be voting in a new district.
“It mostly affects people midtown, west Anchorage area and also midtown south Anchorage. The line shifted in the midtown west Anchorage area to address split precincts that we had their previously. And then the line in South Anchorage is a little bit further South in some areas.”
Officials with the Municipal Clerk’s office say the redistricting was an effort to eliminate split precincts.
“Voters who live in those split precincts, would go into the precinct and instead of everyone voting on the same ballot, they would have to determine what part of town they lived in to issue them the ballot.”
Moser says split precincts occur when a precint is divided into to two or more assembly districts. They are problematic she says because they require the distribution of multiple ballots at polling places. redistricting did not completely eliminate split precincts, but it should simplify things. The Department of Justice did not object to the new districts.
Anchorage Municipal Elections are Tuesday, April 2nd. The polls will be open from 7am until 8pm.
- Anchorage Municipal Elections webpage
- Anchorage Assembly District 1
- Anchorage Assembly District 2
- Anchorage Assembly District 3
- Anchorage Assembly District 4
- Anchorage Assembly District 5
- Anchorage Assembly District 6
- League of Women Voters: Ballot Review
- Sample Ballot
- Notice of Election
- Follow the Municipal Elections on Twitter
- AR 2012-181
Daysha Eaton is a contributor with the Alaska Public Radio Network.
Daysha Eaton holds a B.A. from Evergreen State College, and a M.A. from the University of Southern California. Daysha got her start in radio at Seattle public radio stations, KPLU and KUOW. Before coming to KBBI, she was the News Director at KYUK in Bethel. She has also worked as the Southcentral Reporter for KSKA in Anchorage.
Daysha's work has appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", PRI's "The World" and "National Native News". She's happy to take assignments, and to get news tips, which are best sent via email.
Daysha became a journalist because she believes in the power of storytelling. Stories connect us and they help us make sense of our world. They shed light on injustice and they comfort us in troubled times. She got into public broadcasting because it seems to fulfill the intention of the 4th Estate and to most effectively apply the freedom of the press granted to us through the Constitution. She feels that public radio has a special way of moving people emotionally through sound, taking them to remote places, introducing them to people they would not otherwise meet and compelling them to think about issues they might ordinarily overlook.
