It may come as a surprise to most Sitkans to learn, as we recently did, that our city’s requirements to run for elective office appear to be the most restrictive in Alaska at any level of government.
The Assembly’s 2015 rewrite of the Sitka General Code chapter on elections inserted a section stating that a candidate for mayor or Assembly shall submit a photo, “biographical information” and “an advocacy statement” to the city clerk for placement on the official city website.
The key word in that section is “shall.” That means that it is mandatory. The implied consequence of failure to comply by a certain deadline is that a person who meets all other requirements for office is disqualified as a candidate in the election.
Until now we had believed that candidates’ exposure on the city website was simply at the option of the candidate.
We note that other municipalities in the state also put their local candidates’ pictures and information on their city websites. But we have found none that makes it mandatory.
The State of Alaska likewise puts pictures and statements of candidates for national and state offices on the official state website, and in the state “Official Election Pamphlet.”
The difference between Sitka’s election law and the corresponding laws of the state and other jurisdictions we have checked, is that none of them makes it mandatory that a candidate submit a photo or a statement to the government as a condition of running for office. The candidate has the choice to do it or not. The state even has a schedule of fees for those “who elect to participate” in the election pamphlet, including a bonus longline appearance: $300 each for president and vice president candidates, and lower fees on down to $100 for state senator and representative.
Sitka’s apparently unique requirement that a candidate must submit a picture, a bio and an essay comes on top of the requirements in place for many years, such as residency in Sitka for at least a year, be registered to vote, and financial disclosure.
We don’t doubt that the Assembly members in 2015 had only the best of intentions when they inserted the lengthy section into the city election code requiring mug shots and essays, and we have not heard complaints from candidates in elections since then.
That may be so, but at the present time there is an ordinance before the Assembly, with the imprimatur of the city administrator, the city attorney and the city clerk, that is an indication of how seriously they take this business. The ordinance says that the deadline for a candidate to withdraw and keep their name off the ballot will also be the deadline for candidates to submit their photos, bios and statements to the city clerk. It won’t matter if the city clerk has already accepted a candidate’s other qualifications to run, if they don’t submit their photo and essays by the deadline, they are out of the election.
To wind this up, we regard Sitka’s special candidate qualifications to be government overreach, pure and simple.
We don’t see any bad motives involved here, just an apparent failure of our local officials to consider whether Sitka’s special candidate qualifications comply with the democratic principles of state and federal election law.
We believe they do not.
