Houston City Council certifies election despite irregularities, ballot concerns

HOUSTON — The Houston City Council voted Monday to certify the city’s recent election despite a series of irregularities flagged by citizens and council members, including a ballot error, election notice failures, missing signatures on official tally paperwork, and typos on post-election certification documents.

The council voted 5-2 to certify the results, with council members Lisa Johansen and Sandy McDonald opposed. The Oct. 1 election filled three council seats. Incumbent council members Kent Mitchell, Laurie Faubert and Carter Cole were sworn in after the certification. Cole also serves as mayor.

A recount request filed by write-in candidate Callie Courtney was withdrawn Monday out of respect for three current council members who are dealing with family illnesses or deaths, according to a letter submitted to the council by Courtney’s attorney, Eric Conard. Last week, Conner told the council that the potential cost of the recount, which could reach thousands of dollars, was also a concern. Courtney ran against Faubert for Seat G and lost 133-131.

Municipal elections in Alaska are overseen by the clerk of each city or borough. Oversight tasks include ballot preparation, the appointment and training of local election officials, the administration of Election Day and early voting and the official counting process.

City Clerk Tani Weiber Schoneman administered this year’s Houston election. It was her first municipal election in Houston.

The city hired Schoneman last October after former City Clerk Rebecca Rein left for a new job. Schoneman joined Houston after working in unrelated roles for the state and serving as clerk for Bristol Bay Borough in 2010, she said in an interview Monday.

Houston’s Oct. 1 election has been the subject of controversy since late August, when citizens raised concerns that an official election notice had not been printed in a local newspaper by Aug. 30, as required by Houston law. Officials at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, which publishes the region’s government notices, said they had no record of such a submission from Houston.

Citizens identified additional errors after Election Day, including missing signatures on an official document produced by the city’s canvassing board, which tallies the final results, and a typo that incorrectly listed the term for Seat G on all ballots as three years instead of one year.

More errors were flagged just before and during Monday’s council meeting. An official tally sheet presented to the council as part of the certification process incorrectly listed a “ballots counted” number under a “ballots cast” heading, while a resolution allowing the council to officially accept the results incorrectly identified the seat won by Mitchell and repeated the ballot error, stating that Faubert had been elected for three years, not one. The resolution was corrected during the council meeting.

Schoneman promised to correct the errors in the future.

“I apologize for the confusion in the election numbers. We will be updating the forms, rewriting sections of the code for the election, and it will be a better election next year,” she said during Monday’s meeting.

Schoneman said she did not know whether the term length typo on the ballots was created by the printer or included in her submission.

“I would have to look at my emails,” she told the council.

In Alaska, the printing of municipal ballots is managed by each city or borough. It is not overseen by the Alaska Division of Elections, officials there said.

An official with Homer-based Print Works — a contractor that produces ballots for communities across Alaska, including Houston and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough — said the company receives submissions from localities via PDF files produced for the city or borough by a ballot coding company and then proofed by city staff. They are not able to edit or alter the files, the official said.

Schoneman declined to identify the cause of the various election errors, including the notification error and ballot typos.

“Let’s just say a combination of things. I can’t give you specifics, and it wouldn’t be prudent of me to do that,” she said in an interview after the meeting.

She said the city’s election code needs to be updated.

“We’re going to look at it, revamp it and make sure it’s easier to follow,” she said.

This year’s election questions are the latest in a string of controversies for the city. In July, former City Treasurer Jess Adams was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for embezzlement, including siphoning about $275,000 from the city between 2015 and 2018. In 2022, Houston’s mayor, deputy mayor and finance manager resigned suddenly following the city’s annual October election.

Council members McDonald and Johansen said they could not vote to accept the results of an election that included a ballot error. An amendment proposed by McDonald that would have allowed the council to approve all results except those for Seat G was defeated, with Cole, Mitchell and council member David Childs opposed. Faubert recused herself from the vote because it related to her election.

“This is a major, important issue. And this is not the only mistake,” McDonald said. “I have not much to say, other than I am truly embarrassed for the council.”

Johansen said she plans to report the ballot problem to election oversight officials.

“I’m going to make sure that this ballot issue is brought to the necessary levels to ensure that whatever ramifications come from it are dealt with, whether there are none or there are,” she said. “It’s an issue that needs to be dealt with and should not be ignored.”

Allegations of criminal election or voter misconduct are reviewed by the Alaska Bureau of Investigation, state public safety officials said.

Mitchell said he voted to certify all races including the one with the ballot error because he doesn’t believe the typo affected the election’s outcome.

“I don’t see how it would make any difference in the election, whether it was on the ballot or not, whether you’re voting as a write-in or for Council member Faubert,” he said.

Mitchell was reelected to Seat D and appeared on the ballot unopposed.

Cole, who won reelection 154-116 over challenger Wayne Oliver, said he’s ready to get the city’s focus back on other business.

“We’ve had so many people looking at this election. It would be nice to put it behind us,” he said.

Republished with permission from the Mat-Su Sentinel, an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan online news source. Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com.

[Editor’s note: This story was updated Oct. 16 to add a comment from Houston’s ballot printing contractor.]