Section 1: Description of Requested Change
Date Requested: 1/22/99
In this request, some terminology
needs explaining. "Service Area" means a taxation district which
may not encompass the entire jurisdiction. "Areawide" means the
entire jurisdiction and encompasses all service areas.
In Anchorage, Alaska, a service area
may put a question on the ballot which requests bond debt. The debt is paid
out of taxes paid only by the voters in the service area. However, because
the full faith and credit of the entire city secures the debt, the question
is voted on areawide. Thus, of course, the race is assigned to the
jurisdiction wide district. These questions must be approved by voters who
live within the service area boundaries (because they will be taxed to pay
the debt) and also must be approved areawide. To be sure both majorities are
attained, two vote tallies are compiled. One tally includes the votes of
persons areawide (which includes the service area as well); the other tally
includes only the votes of persons in the service area. As the letter from
Anchorage (from which I have plagiarized shamelessly) explaining this need
says, "In essence, the vote of a person within a service area is
tallied in two columns while the vote of a person outside the service area
is tallied only in one of the columns." Naturally, several report
precincts are split by service area boundaries and thus contain voters of
both types. Some report precincts contain several service areas whose
boundaries are not identical. Anchorage is unwilling to have two vote
centers in split report precincts as a means of separating results between
"inside service area" and "outside service area" at the
precinct level. They are also unwilling to create separate report precincts
for the precincts which are split between "inside service area"
and "outside service area". They are also unwilling to create
separate identical races assigned to "inside service area" and
"outside service area".
What GEMS must be able to do: The
individual report precinct must be able to report the results of the service
area question both for the entire report precinct, and for the base
precinct(s) which are in the service area separate from any base precinct(s)
which are not in the service area. This reporting must be done both on the
results tape at the vote center and on any precinct summary report at the
central elections office. This reporting must allow other races which are
not affected by the inside service area/outside service area split to be
reported only for the entire report precinct. Additionally, if it is
possible, Anchorage would like it if a single report could show the areawide
totals and the service area totals as columns of the same report.
What Anchorage needs from software
development: As soon as possible, Anchorage needs to know how long this
change would take to implement, and how much it would ostensibly cost for us
to do it. They are planning to speak to the powers that be (the bond
counsel) to see if the service area questions can be created as separate
questions; one would be "shall service area X float a bond and be taxed
for it", the other would be "shall the full faith and credit of
the city of Anchorage be put behind a bond in service area X". In that
case, the voters in the service area would vote on both questions. Voters
not in the service area would only vote on the latter question. If this
requested change will be costly and require a lot of time to implement, they
will have a stronger argument and more ammunition when they face the bond
council. Unfortunately, they have already approached the bond counsel once
with this request and been denied. Bear in mind that Anchorage has been sold
GEMS on the notion that it can properly report these service area questions.
Also bear in mind that Anchorage has an election with several service area
questions on April 20, 1999.