Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce told KSRM on Thursday that he plans to veto the vote-by-mail ordinance passed by the Borough Assembly on June 3.
The original ordinance, 2020-24, was set to be decided during the June 2 assembly meeting, but as the clock struck midnight, the assembly called a recess before the vote by mail issue was decided. The assembly reconvened the following afternoon to finish discussion and pass the ordinance, deciding how residents in the borough will vote in upcoming elections. The six yes votes were cast by assembly members Tyson Cox, Willie Dunn, Brent Johnson, Brent Hibbert, Hal Smalley, and Kelly Cooper. The no votes were cast by Kenn Carpenter, Norm Blakeley, and Jesse Bjorkman.
The agreed-upon ‘hybrid’ structure means that voting will take place via mail-in ballots alongside traditional voting at polling places.
When talking to KSRM on Thursday, Mayor Charlie Pierce was asked if he plans to use his power of veto: “Yes, I’m going to. There’s a number of folks – lots of folks, not a number, a lot of folks in the borough who would prefer to have this voted on. They’ve asked for that. They’ve requested that. They did it when it was introduced. You would expect that’s when they would come to the table, that’s often what they do. Yet, there’s a trend around the world and the nation that vote-by-mail is the way to go. Some say it’s less expensive, and many argued that it’s more expensive. It’s not going to go to the ballot – the decision has been made by the majority of the assembly, and it’s a vote-by-mail will occur and my determination, and I’m getting a considerable amounts of requests, is to veto it.”
He added that he would not be using his veto if the original ordinance had allowed for the issue to be voted-on by residents at the ballot box before being enacted.
An override of Mayor Pierce’s veto would take six votes in the Assembly. The original ordinance creating the hybrid vote-by-mail system was passed with six yes votes, and the attempt to bring the topic back up for discussion during the June 16 meeting was defeated by the same six voters. Mayor Pierce acknowledged that it is likely that his veto will be overridden, but that he feels a responsibility to “represent the people.”
