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Section 1: Description of Requested Change Date Requested: 1/22/99In this request, some terminology needs explaining. "Service Area" means a taxation district which may not encompass the entire jurisdiction. "Areawide" means the entire jurisdiction and encompasses all service areas. In Anchorage, Alaska, a service area may put a question on the ballot which requests bond debt. The debt is paid out of taxes paid only by the voters in the service area. However, because the full faith and credit of the entire city secures the debt, the question is voted on areawide. Thus, of course, the race is assigned to the jurisdiction wide district. These questions must be approved by voters who live within the service area boundaries (because they will be taxed to pay the debt) and also must be approved areawide. To be sure both majorities are attained, two vote tallies are compiled. One tally includes the votes of persons areawide (which includes the service area as well); the other tally includes only the votes of persons in the service area. As the letter from Anchorage (from which I have plagiarized shamelessly) explaining this need says, "In essence, the vote of a person within a service area is tallied in two columns while the vote of a person outside the service area is tallied only in one of the columns." Naturally, several report precincts are split by service area boundaries and thus contain voters of both types. Some report precincts contain several service areas whose boundaries are not identical. Anchorage is unwilling to have two vote centers in split report precincts as a means of separating results between "inside service area" and "outside service area" at the precinct level. They are also unwilling to create separate report precincts for the precincts which are split between "inside service area" and "outside service area". They are also unwilling to create separate identical races assigned to "inside service area" and "outside service area". What GEMS must be able to do: The individual report precinct must be able to report the results of the service area question both for the entire report precinct, and for the base precinct(s) which are in the service area separate from any base precinct(s) which are not in the service area. This reporting must be done both on the results tape at the vote center and on any precinct summary report at the central elections office. This reporting must allow other races which are not affected by the inside service area/outside service area split to be reported only for the entire report precinct. Additionally, if it is possible, Anchorage would like it if a single report could show the areawide totals and the service area totals as columns of the same report. What Anchorage needs from software development: As soon as possible, Anchorage needs to know how long this change would take to implement, and how much it would ostensibly cost for us to do it. They are planning to speak to the powers that be (the bond counsel) to see if the service area questions can be created as separate questions; one would be "shall service area X float a bond and be taxed for it", the other would be "shall the full faith and credit of the city of Anchorage be put behind a bond in service area X". In that case, the voters in the service area would vote on both questions. Voters not in the service area would only vote on the latter question. If this requested change will be costly and require a lot of time to implement, they will have a stronger argument and more ammunition when they face the bond council. Unfortunately, they have already approached the bond counsel once with this request and been denied. Bear in mind that Anchorage has been sold GEMS on the notion that it can properly report these service area questions. Also bear in mind that Anchorage has an election with several service area questions on April 20, 1999. |