The City of Soldotna voted against an ordinance to enact a city-wide vote-by-mail hybrid system during their council meeting on Wednesday, June 24. The vote was unanimous, with six no votes against zero yes votes.
City Clerk Shellie Saner discussed why she felt this was not the appropriate time to make the declaration about the voting system, particularly given the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s recent changes to their vote-by-mail ordinance: “As I explained briefly last week, the Election Stakeholder’s Task Force met through 2019 and came away with the recommendation, in-part of going by mail. The clerks have been meeting, starting last fall, working on bringing forward proposals for 2021. That would give us time to work with our council. COVID sped that up and the Borough ordinance – so this was drafted to catch up with the borough, because we share voters and a process. The borough ordinance has been amended so that it does not take effect until January 1, 2021. At this point, I’m asking the council to not enact this ordinance, which will give us time for more community outreach, work sessions with the council, and the opportunity to draft a new ordinance that would not so tightly tie our elections with the borough, should the city council decide to go in another direction with our elections.”
Ordinance 2020-015 had previously been brought before the council in May, but was postponed until the June 24 meeting. Had it passed, elections in Soldotna would look very similar to measure passed by the Kenai Peninsula Borough. Each eligible voter in Soldotna would have received a ballot via mail, but would still have the option to vote in-person at a polling place.
The latter distinction is what made this proposal a hybrid structure, rather than an exclusively vote-by-mail structure.
The ordinance not only aimed to introduce the vote-by-mail hybrid structure, but also had provisions that would have allowed for more time between a regular election and run-off election, and to provide procedures for verifying candidate qualifications.