Anchorage Assembly members float new campaign requirements for local political offices

Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News on Sep 20, 2026

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Two members of the Anchorage Assembly are recommending a significant reform to local elections, adding a potential new threshold candidates would need to meet to officially campaign.

The proposed rule change to Title 28, the municipality's laws governing elections, could require would-be candidates to submit a minimum number of signatures gathered from qualified voters to the clerk's office in order to appear on municipal ballots in mayoral, Assembly and school board races.

"We're going to be proposing 50 (signatures) for the district races and 250 for the city-wide races. That was just to keep things simple," said Donald Handeland, who represents Eagle River on the Assembly, during a Thursday interview.

He introduced the ordinance alongside downtown member Sydney Scout.

The change would only affect local offices, which are administered by the municipal clerk's office, not state legislative and gubernatorial contests, or federal congressional and presidential elections held in the month of November.

Officially, Anchorage has around 238,000 eligible voters, and sees turnout in the range of 30% in its spring elections.

The original version of the rule proposed candidates collect 1% of the total voter turnout within an election area boundary, a threshold that could mean dozens of signatures in some Assembly districts or hundreds in areawide races for mayor or school board. Based on feedback, Handeland said, he and Scout are developing a revised version with substantially lower signature requirements.

"We really didn't want the number to be too low, but we in no way want this to be a burden to any candidates," Handeland said.

Under current municipal rules, anyone who submits an application for local office within the deadline window appears on the ballot. This regularly leads to crowded candidate fields, particularly in mayoral elections, with many filers doing little or no actual campaign work to seriously compete. The 2021 mayor's race, for example, saw 15 official candidates on the ballot. Of those, nine received less than 1% of the total votes cast.

"It's pretty wild to me that somebody can just fill out a form and be a mayoral candidate, basically, without talking to anyone or being vetted in any way," said Scout, adding that introducing the nomination petition component was a way of ensuring voters see candidates with a "bare minimum level of community interest."

She and Handeland spoke to members of the municipality's Election Commission at a meeting on Wednesday, in which multiple commissioners alluded to the same issue.

"I think there's going to be substantial pushback from certain kinds of people," said commission vice chair Loren Leman during the meeting, referring to "perennial candidates" who use elections to "make a statement."

Commission member Ann Courtney said that a requirement to go out and collect some number of voter signatures could help "get more serious candidates and weed out people who are less serious.

"If your goal is to get someone who is truly interested in serving in the position, then they will go out and get the required signatures," Courtney said.

According to a memorandum Handeland and Scout filed alongside the ordinance, various villages, towns and boroughs all over Alaska already have similar requirements for local candidates.

"The idea to require a nomination petition in order for a candidate's name to eligible to be placed on the ballot is not new," the memo states. It adds that given the low threshold for signatures, as well as the absence of any monetary requirement or fee, the measure "is likely to withstand any challenge" to its legality in court. Ballots would also still include a write-in option for candidates who did not officially qualify via the nomination petition.

The new requirement was one of 10 adjustments proposed in Handeland and Scout's ordinance. The other measures are housekeeping to existing code. Only the signature requirement component would have a major effect on how local elections and campaigns are conducted.

"That's really the only piece in here that isn't an administrative clean-up or could be seen as new at all," Scout said Wednesday.

Handeland said he expects a revised draft of the measure will go before other Assembly members at a work session in the next few weeks. A refined substitute version of the ordinance could be open to public testimony and a vote from the full body at the Assembly's Oct. 20 meeting, he said.