Assembly Adopts Election Code Rewrite Ordinance 2025-14, March 3, 2025
On Monday, March 3, 2025, the Assembly adopted Ordinance 2025-14am An Ordinance Amending the City and Borough Title 29 Code Relating to Elections Processes and Procedures.
In 2024, the Clerk’s Office received four petitions from citizens trying to engage in direct democracy. About 15% of the signatures initially turned in were rejected. Of those, more than half were rejected due to the strict, and outdated, requirements laid out in 29.10.090 about what is an ‘adequate’ address. This section of code was written before Clerk staff had real-time access to the State Division of Elections Voter Database (VREMS) which allows staff to quickly verify if a person is a Juneau resident who is eligible to sign a petition.
This led Clerk staff to propose Ordinance 2025-14, with the help of the Law Department. This ordinance removed many technical or procedural actions throughout the entire election code and placed them into Rules of Procedure, which will allow election staff to better adapt to changing technologies. It also requires that the Rules of Procedure be available to the public online. This ordinance removed redundancies, rewrote complex language, and updated terminology definitions to make the code more readable by the public.
Additionally, this ordinance provides some minor changes in timing, primarily when ballots are to be mailed out.
The ordinance was introduced at the February 3, 2025 Assembly meeting, discussed in greater detail and amended during the February 24, 2025 Assembly Committee of the Whole meeting. Public hearing and Assembly adopted took place during the March 3, 2025 meeting and the ordinance effective date is April 2, 2025.
# # #
For additional information, please contact the CBJ Municipal Clerk’s Office at (907) 586-5278 or CBJ.Elections@juneau.org.