The polls will open today at 7 a.m. for the city\u2019s special mayoral election, and if early voting results are any indication, they may be busier than they were last October.<\/p>\n
As of Friday, more than 1,300 people had cast an absentee ballot in the mayoral race, already beating last fall\u2019s total early voting turnout of 982, according to City Clerk and Election Official Laurie Sica. That doesn\u2019t include the ballots from Monday\u2019s early voting crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that we\u2019ve far exceeded our by-mail and by-fax voting, and our absentee stations have been very busy as well,\u201d Sica said Monday afternoon before the day\u2019s ballots had been tallied. \u201cI think we\u2019re probably double of what we did at the fall election so far. We were almost up to last year\u2019s turnout by Friday of last week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last October, 5,764 people voted in the mayoral race between incumbent Merrill Sanford and challenger Greg Fisk. This year\u2019s race between Karen Crane and Ken Koelsch has been a bit more heated and a lot more visible.<\/p>\n
As of March 8, when Crane and Koelsch filed their most recent spending reports with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, the candidates had spent a combined total of nearly $80,000 on their campaigns. Koelsch\u2019s campaign alone had spent more than $50,000.<\/p>\n
Both campaigns have funneled much of their money into yard signs and radio and newspaper advertising at rates unseen in the last mayoral race, during which both candidates together spent less than $30,000.<\/p>\n
Juneau has 13 voting precincts, which means it also has 13 polling places. If you are unsure where to vote, call the polling place locator at 1-888-383-8683.<\/p>\n
One polling location has changed since the last election. Voters previously accustomed to voting in the Mendenhall Mall will now vote in the Mendenhall Valley Public Library. Before last fall\u2019s election, the Auke Bay Fire Hall polling place was moved to the University of Alaska Southeast Recreation Center, which is where it will remain for all future elections.<\/p>\n
Polls close at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The polls will open today at 7 a.m. for the city\u2019s special mayoral election, and if early voting results are any indication, they may be busier than they were last October. As of Friday, more than 1,300 people had cast an absentee ballot in the mayoral race, already beating last fall\u2019s total early voting turnout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14733"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}