Sande wins Wasilla write-in race

WASILLA -- Robert Sande has won the write-in race for Wasilla's city council seat D. When absentee and questioned ballots were tallied Friday, Sande finished with 70 votes and a 17-vote lead over Pat Hjellen's 53 votes. David Terrill finished with 24 votes, Bernadette Rupright finished with 21 and John J. Rodgers finished with 5. Wasilla City Clerk Kristie Smithers also reported 131 miscellaneous write-in votes for other candidates.

Sande said Friday afternoon he was looking forward to serving on city council.

"I knocked on a lot of doors the last week of the campaign. I really got a good message from the community as far as their concerns," Sande said.

Voters want subdivisions paved, utilities extended and traffic problems in downtown taken care of, according to Sande.

"Basically they want to see a continuation of what's been going on the past six years, because that's what Sarah Palin's administration has been doing," Sande said.

Voters also bent Sande's ear about the Wasilla library, which is said by many to be over-crowded and in need of replacement.

"One ongoing concern that is still hanging out there is the library, so I heard a lot about that," he said.

Seat D was a write-in only race because no one had signed up for the race when the filing period closed in July. Smithers said a counting team worked on Wednesday following election night to sort and tally the write-in ballots. Sande led Hjellen by 18 votes after Wednesday's count. 131 Questioned and absentee ballots were accounted for by the canvassing board on Friday, and the race ended with Sande up by 13.

Smithers said the counting team used hand counting methods published by the State of Alaska Division of Elections. That meant that mis-spelled names could be counted if the counting team could interpret what the voter meant, according to Smithers.

"What didn't get counted were the ones that had just one name. For example, if they had just 'Scott' or just 'Christiansen' we didn't count that … [Voters] needed to write in the first and last name in order [for the vote] to be counted," Smithers said.

Printed instructions at the top of each ballot read as follows: "To write in a candidate, print the name of the person in the blank space provided and then completely fill in the oval next to the name."

Smithers said the counting team did not count ballots that had a name written in the space, but that did not have a mark on the oval. Smithers said she didn't know how many ballots with names written in were rejected. Ovals marked but not completely filled in would have counted.

"In order to be counted, the oval needed to be either marked or filled in completely, that's going by the hand-counting procedures of the sate that we used," Smithers said, "… Most of them were colored-in completely. There were very few check marks."

None of the five declared write-in candidates came to city hall to watch the counting team or canvassing board do their work, according to Smithers.

The clerk's office reported 987 legal ballots cast in the city election after absentee and questioned ballots were scrutinized by the canvassing board Friday. The total number of ballots that counted in the write-in election was 304.