Unalaska, AK – It's been ten days since city investigators announced their findings from an inquiry into this month's city elections, which means that the city's deadline for challenging the results of that investigation expires today. But the controversy over the investigation is far from over.

City Council candidate Randall Baker, who filed the challenge to the October 2 results, said he and his lawyer are still investigating his initial allegation that many voters who participated in the October 2 election weren't Unalaska residents. They're currently waiting to receive a list of people who voted in the election, which they requested from the State Division of Elections.

"For the city to say that this investigation settled anything doesn't seem to me even to pass the common sense test," said Charles Dunnagan, Baker's Anchorage-based attorney (Baker spoke briefly with KIAL this afternoon, but said he was too busy to comment). "It wasn't much of an investigation, it wasn't much of an analysis, and the stuff that we understand doesn't seem to be right." (The city's investigation report can be found here.)

Dunnagan said if and how they proceed from here will be determined by what they find in the voter rolls.

Meanwhile, Baker is firing another salvo over the election. In a letter he sent to the Dutch Harbor Fisherman for publication this week, he includes the text of an e-mail that Mayor Shirley Marquardt sent in late August to executives of the At-Sea Processors Association and the Pacific Seafood Processors Association, whose members include all the major Unalaska processing plants. Those plants employ the seasonal workers whose voter eligibility Baker is challenging.

In the e-mail, Marquardt discusses the election and the three candidates supported by the Unalaska Union Coalition. One of those candidates was Baker, who is also the head of the local chapter of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union, and another was Shannon Morrison, who was running against Marquardt for the mayor's seat.

Marquardt writes that the unions "are going all the way with organizing in Unalaska and this election is the start." She stops short of calling for the support of any specific candidate in the election, but she does write that "it is going to be so important to get the vote out."

Reached today, Marquardt confirmed that she had sent the e-mail, and said it was in response to an ILWU document that she had obtained, in which the union described Unalaska as one of its organizing priorities. She chose not to comment on Baker's attempt to publish the e-mail in the paper.