Kenai Peninsula Borough voters headed to the polls today to cast ballots in this year’s municipal election.
The first round of election results won’t be available until later tonight. But, a key theme on the central Kenai Peninsula on Tuesday was slow traffic because of uncontested races.
All of this year’s Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly races, as well as the Soldotna and Kenai city council races, are uncontested. There’s only one contested school board race. Sarah Douthit and Jeanne Reveal are both running for the board’s Kenai seat.
Lin Kennedy’s been working polls since 2020. She was chairing the Soldotna precinct in the Soldotna Public Library today. At that location, voters were casting ballots in both a city election and a borough election.
“I was hoping it’d be a little busier by now, but hopefully it’ll pick up this afternoon,” Kennedy said, “you know, we haven’t hit the lunch crowd yet.”
New to the precinct this year were the results of Soldotna’s inaugural “I Voted” sticker design contest. In addition to the generic city and borough stickers were three featuring illustrations from local artists. The city announced the winners at this year’s Progress Days celebration in July. The first-place designs feature salmon, an ice field and mountains.
Kennedy said she’s happy to have the new stickers.
“As a Soldotna resident, I really like them,” she said, “they’re very nice and it’s nice to have an ‘I Voted’ sticker that says Soldotna on it. So, yeah it’s pretty cool.”
As of around 1 p.m. today, voters had cast about 120 ballots at the Soldotna precinct. Kennedy said the actual number of voters is less than that because some people cast ballots in both the city and borough election.
Down the street from the library, “Vote Here” signs directed a different group of voters to the Kenai Peninsula Borough clerk’s office.
Michele Turner is the borough clerk, meaning she’s in charge of all borough elections. On Tuesday, she was helping run an absentee in-person polling place from her office at the borough building in Soldotna.
“Our absentee voting site here opens two weeks prior to the election day, and it's also open today,” Turner said, “on election day, it's for those voters who are unable to make it to their precincts on election day, or perhaps they're traveling before election day, and they want to make sure that they're able to vote in this year's election.”
Turner said more than 1,087 people had voted absentee across all the borough’s absentee polling places as of this afternoon. It doesn’t include by-mail absentee ballots, which will still be counted as long as they’re postmarked by election day. The number is comparable, she said, to the more than 1,300 total absentee ballots counted last year.
Later this evening, Turner’s office will compile precinct counts to generate preliminary election results. But the election won’t be certified by Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly members until their Oct. 8 meeting.
“The central area precincts will bring all of their supplies back here, including their voted ballots,” she said, “before they leave their polling locations, though, they transmit results to our election server and then totals are reported on our website later tonight after polls are closed.”
Despite mostly uncontested races, polling places on the southern Kenai Peninsula reported a fairly steady number of voters Tuesday morning.
South of Ninilchik, residents are deciding the fate of an over $38.5 million bond for South Peninsula Hospital through Proposition 1. If approved, the bond will pay for building maintenance, purchasing property the hospital currently leases and expanding the hospital’s infusion clinic. That clinic provides chemotherapy treatment.
Nikolaevsk resident Trisha Davis supports the bond. She said supporting local healthcare is important for a growing community.
“I do have a particular interest in Proposition 1 with the hospital, and my husband went through cancer treatments. [He] had to drive to Soldotna every day of the week, you know, Monday through Friday, for 12 weeks for radiation therapy, and it takes a financial toll to do that,” Davis said.
Warren Miller lives in the Fritz Creek area, east of Homer. He voted against the bond. He said it will benefit a small number of people and doesn’t want the tax burden.
“Why would anybody vote to increase a tax on themselves? It was beyond my understanding. So I obviously voted no to have that dumped on us,” Miller said.
Inside Homer’s city limits, voters are picking a new mayor. Longtime Homer City Council member Rachel Lord is running against Homer Chamber of Commerce vice president Jim Anderson.
Byron Sansom said he supports Lord because of her experience in local government.
“She always does her homework about issues before the city council. She always understands the issues. She takes time to go through them, which I think of diligence, due diligence. She practices that,” Sansom said.
Others, like Sean Calavan, are voting for Anderson.
“I thought it was compelling that he was raised in this area. It sounds like he's lived outside of this area for quite a long time, but seems like a really charismatic guy, and he seems really motivated to help the community develop a better tight-knit feel,” he said.
While voter turnout in the borough as a whole has been under 20% since 2021, several people who do vote feel it’s important to do so. Sherry Pederson, of Fritz Creek, says she votes to show her children how to engage in local issues. .
“I think, just to role model for my kids, that every issue does matter, and that it is important to go out and vote,” she said, “I know it seems like, ‘oh, it's no big deal,’ but I think it empowers me also to stay in tune to what's happening in the area, so I want to make sure I make an informed choice.”
On the other side of the peninsula, Seward residents are voting on two city council members. It’s one of a handful of contested elections. Incumbents John Osenga and Mike Calhoon are running against newcomers Casie Warner and John Howard. The top two vote getters will win a seat on the council.
Polls are open tonight until 8 p.m. When available, Kenai Peninsula Borough election results will be posted on the borough’s election webpage. Results from city races will be available on individual city websites.
