An effort to decide whether to change the Municipality of Anchorage’s official seal has been marred by technical manipulation and misinformation, city leaders say.
Anchorage officials put out a web survey late last month for members of the public to weigh in on five proposed seals, including one that has no changes. But Anchorage IT staff say over 2,100 responses were logged in under an hour earlier this week, leading officials to believe they were fraudulent. The responses used variations of the exact same language and were in support of not changing the seal at all.
“So it's possible, not plausible, but it is possible that these are possibly to be legitimate survey responses?” Eagle River Assembly member Jared Goecker asked Anchorage Chief Information Security Officer Jon Rendulic.
“Statistically, it's improbable,” Rendulic said. “It doesn't look like a legitimate result. But we can't prove it.”
Another batch of survey results in support of not changing the seal cited concerns over the cost of implementing it, Assembly Chair Chris Constant said. A local media outlet described the change as costing the city money, leading members of the public to oppose changing it, Constant said. But the legal language around changing the seal actually says it would be phased in over time, at very little cost, he said.
“When you need new letterhead, you will add the new letterhead and you'll print it when it's time,” Constant said. “When we buy a new snowplow, we will add it to the new snowplow, but we're not going to send the fleet back in for paint jobs.”
The five seal options all contain a prominent anchor in the center, using a yellow and blue color palette. Some options include a traditional or simplified Dena'ina quillwork design or a ship in the background, signifying explorer James Cook’s search for the Northwest Passage. Dena'ina multimedia artist Sebastian Garber helped contribute to the quillwork designs.
Taking the survey discrepancies city officials raised into account, a narrow majority of responses favored a new seal, though the respondents did not agree on any one of the four new designs and the option with the most votes was keeping the old seal.
The Assembly is set to select one of the options during its next meeting Tuesday night.
