The nine page report from investigator Dan Hensley found inexperience and lack of training to be the major contributing factors in Aprils contentious election. The assembly payed the retired superior court judge 35 thousand dollars to review hundreds of pages of records to ascertain what failures caused ballot shortages in many of the polling locations.

After reviewing the available documents and interviewing more than sixty election workers and city employees Hensley found no evidence of any city or election workers intentionally attempting to change the outcome of the election.

The investigation did turn up some issues that need correcting.
among the findings. The training manual did not spell out for election workers what to do if ballots are running low. Ballot expectations for the April election did not take into account the higher than usual voter turn out for the gay rights issue, and city clerk Barbara Gruenstein took a hands off approach to managing the election.

The Anchorage assembly plans on using the information from Mr. Henslys report as well as a report from a committee of ten citizen voters that looked into the ballot situation to make changes in the way municipal elections are run. While it is not the audit that had been asked for by the concerned citizens group they are glad to see the assembly stepping up.