There’s no more “Yellow Brick Road” at the Anchorage Election Office in Ship Creek. That is the area marked with yellow tape on the floor where members of the public are allowed to observe the vote-counting process in the Anchorage mayoral runoff election.
Municipal Clerk Barb Jones said that the campaigns of Dave Bronson and Forrest Dunbar may each have four observers watching as votes are counted and adjudicated, but observers from the public, or from a political party for example, are no longer allowed in the building because their presence has been slowing down the process.
Several public members have been attending vote counting over the past two days since the election closed on May 11.
Observers say that the Clerk is using Covid as a reason for keeping people out of the building.
Jones is kicking all observers out of the building at 5 pm sharp, but workers remain in the building and working for several hours every night unobserved by the public.
The mayor’s election ended at 8 pm on Tuesday. As of Wednesday night, 84,077 ballots had been received, and 76,022 ballots had been tallied, with Dave Bronson in the lead. Bronson had 38,150 votes, 278 more than Dunbar, as of Wednesday night. The next count will be released by 5 pm Thursday.
