LT. GOVERNOR ABUSES HIS ELECTION AUTHORITY

The lieutenant governor's role is one that often fades into the
background once a gubernatorial election is won, but Loren Leman is
managing to grab far more newsprint than most who have held his
office. Unfortunately, he's doing it by abusing the lieutenant
governor's most important duty - overseeing elections.

This week backers of a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana filed
suit against Leman because one of his staff members wrote the
opposition statement to the proposition in the state's Official
Election Pamphlet. The medical director of a drug treatment center
signed the statement, but the words were mostly those of a Leman
staffer. While the staff member claims she was in a time crunch and
would have done the same for the other side, these are not legitimate
excuses from an office that is supposed to remain impartial when
distributing election information.

Already Leman's urge to inject his own agenda into the state's
election pamphlet and ballot has cost Alaskans $295,000. An Anchorage
Superior Court Judge in late September ordered the state to change
this year's ballots because Leman had inserted wording into the
supposedly neutral summary of an initiative on filling U.S. Senate
vacancies.

The ballot proposition calls for Senate vacancies to be filled by
election, rather than by appointment by the governor.

Leman inserted a statement that this measure would leave Alaska's
Senate seat empty for three to five months. That claim is one of the
key arguments by critics of this measure and is disputed by the
measure's supporters.

After the court ruling against Leman, extra staff was needed to
reprint and redistribute all 517,000 ballots by election time. But the
wording did get into the election pamphlet that was sent out across
the state.

Leman had tried to remove the initiative on Senate vacancies from the
ballot twice, using claims that it was unconstitutional and then
saying recent legislation achieved the same result as the proposition.
But the Alaska Supreme Court ruled against Leman and ordered that the
measure be placed back on the ballot.

While Leman talks about conducting the elections with integrity, his
actions speak far louder than his words.

He's lost his credibility as an impartial overseer of the state's
election process.

Usually the state election pamphlet is a safe place to go for a
neutral summary of initiatives, followed by arguments on both sides,
but this year, voters need to read the statements with some caution.

And the next time Leman's name is on the ballot, voters need to
remember how he tried to abuse his authority over elections to further
his own agenda, and ask themselves if they really want to give this
man any more power.