Court Opinion

ID: 9789101
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:27:59.596522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:44:32.118538
License: Public Domain

BRYNER, Justice,
dissenting.
I. INTRODUCTION
Alaska law requires judges who seek retention to declare their candidacy to the Alaska Division of Elections no later than August 1 of the election year. Here, two judges who sought retention and received favorable evaluations by the Alaska Judicial Council failed to file personal declarations of candidacy with the Division; for that reason, the Division refused to include them on the ballot, despite its receipt of timely filings of the Council's evaluations, which established that the judges had already declared to the Council their intent to stand on the ballot. Today's opinion upholds the Division's decision. I disagree.
As an integral part of the judicial retention process established by Alaska law, the Council must contact and evaluate all sitting judges who seek retention well in advance of the deadline for filing their declarations of candidacy with the Division. As part of its evaluation process, the Council must identify *238which judges actually intend to stand on the retention ballot, and, after evaluating those who declare their intent, it must file its evaluations with the Division so that the evaluations can appear in the Division's Election Pamphlet.
Because the law authorizes the Council to determine which judges declared their intent to run, requires it to base its evaluations on this determination, and obliges it to file its evaluations with the Division, the Council's compliance with these obligations before the August 1 deadline met all statutory requirements for timely declarations of candidacy. The Council's evaluations formally establish that each judge who is favorably evaluated has declared the intent to stand for retention and possesses the qualifications to do so. The evaluations also incorporate all other information required by the Division's pre-seribed form for declaring candidacy. Accordingly, I would conclude that the Division had authority to accept the evaluations as declarations of candidacy, even though they were filed by the Council and not by the individual judges evaluated.
II. OVERVIEW OF ALASKA'S JUDICIAL RETENTION PROCESS
To explain my conclusion, it will help to begin by reviewing Alaska's judicial retention process. Under Alaska law, judges are appointed to office for indefinite terms but must periodically appear on the ballot to allow voters to determine whether they should be retained.1 Each judge must initially stand for retention in the first general election held more than three years after the judge's appointment.2 After the initial retention election, the interval to the next election depends on the level of judgeship: ten years for supreme court justices;3 eight years for court of appeals judges; 4 six years for superior court judges;5 and four years for district court judges.6
The procedures for conducting judicial retention elections are unique to Alaska. Alaska law requires three separate state agencies to participate in the process: the Alaska Judicial Council,7 the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct,8 and the Alaska Division of Elections.9 The role played by each agency will be outlined below; because the court's opinion focuses on the Division's role in the process and makes only passing reference to the Council's actions, the description here will focus more closely on the Council's part of the overall process.
A. The Council's Role in the Retention Process
Alaska's judicial retention process begins with the Alaska Judicial Council. The Council is an independent state agency created by the Alaska Constitution whose primary constitutional charge is to solicit, evaluate, and nominate to the governor applicants for judicial positions.10 But the constitution also requires the Council to perform other fune-tions upon direction by the legislature.11 The key duties the legislature assigned to the Council include conducting a preelection evaluation of each justice or judge seeking retention, informing the public about its evaluation, and filing the evaluation with the Director of Elections for inclusion in the Divi*239sion's Election Pamphlet.12 To this end, the Election Code specifically directs the Council to evaluate "each supreme court justice, court of appeals judge, superior court judge, and district court judge who will be subject to a retention election" and to file with the lieutenant governor by August 7 a statement incorporating the Council's evaluatlon of each candidate.13
In keeping with this statutory duty, the Council has developed and adopted an intensive public process to evaluate the performance of judges who intend to stand for retention.14 This process encompasses all aspects of the judge's performance; it collects, compiles, and analyzes data from a broad spectrum of participants in the judicial process; it invites all interested members of the public to participate and comment on the candidates at various stages of the process; and the Council's activities are publicized on an ongoing basis by notice of the Council's hearings, statewide press releases, and a regularly updated, widely advertised website.15
Because this process is time consuming, the Council must begin its evaluation in the fall of the year preceding the year in which the retention election is to be held-almost a year before the election and nine months before the Council's August 7 deadline for filing its evaluations with the Division. Since the Council's statutory charge is to evaluate those judges who "will be subject to" the election 16-not all judges eligible to run-the Council begins by sending all judges eligible for retention a memo specifically addressed to "Judges Standing for Retention"; the memo attaches a questionnaire soliciting information from those judges who consider themselves to be "Candidates for Judicial Retention." The questionnaire asks responding judges for various categories of information relevant to their retention:
e a statistical breakdown of their workload;
ea summary 'of their participation on court/bar committees and in other administrative activities;
® a narrative statement assessing their judicial performance, including satisfaction with their judicial role, contributions to the judiciary or the field of law, and improvements in knowledge and skills;
@a description of non-judicial events and activities that could conflict with their judicial responsibilities, such as having tax liens or collection proceedings filed against them, being involved in non-court-related legal proceedings, engaging in the practice of law, or holding any *240other local, state, federal, or political office;
elists describing case names, numbers, and participants in the three most recent cases handled by the judge involving jury trials, non-jury trials, and dispositions requiring significant work but ending without a trial; and
® a list of case names, case numbers, and '- participants for any other particularly noteworthy cases.
Judges who do not intend to run for retention are not expected to return the questionnaires and, in fact, do not return them. Those who do want to stand for retention return the questionnaires; by so doing they provide the Council with the information and authorization needed to trigger its statutorily mandated evaluation. In effect, then, judges who submit completed questionnaires to the Council declare their intent to stand on the ballot.17 For its part, the Council interprets its statutory duty as obliging it to "evaluate each judge standing for retention elections"; in keeping with this interpretation, it treats the returned questionnaires as declarations of candidacy. The Council does not evaluate eligible judges who decline to return questionnaires, and throughout the course of its evaluation process it consistently refers to the responding judges as judges who will actually "stand[ ] for retention."
After receiving questionnaires from judges who intend to stand for retention, the Council undertakes its investigation and prepares its evaluation. The Council's investigation relies on three broad sources of information: surveys asking various interested groups to evaluate the judge's performance; collection and review of all performance-related materials available concerning the judge, including materials available from other public agen-cles such as the court system, the Alaska Public Offices Commission, and the Commission on Judicial Conduct; and information obtained through public input actively solicited by the Council. In summarizing its evaluation procedures for the 2004 retention election, the Council emphasized the breadth and openness of the process:
The Judicial Council evaluates judges with the help of thousands of Alaska citizens-police and probation officers, attorneys, jurors, court employees, social workers and others who appear in court before the judges. In 2004, the Council surveyed these groups, asked for written and oral comments from the public throughout the state, and reviewed records about judges' workloads, conflicts of interest, and other aspects of performance.
Upon completing its investigation and compiling all relevant data, the Council's staff prepares the judicial evaluations and cireu-lates the compiled materials to Council members for review. The Council meets in July to consider the information and make retention recommendations.18 As required by law, the evaluations are then filed with the lieu tenant governor for inclusion in the Division's Election Pamphlet. For the 2004 retention election, the Council held its meeting to adopt the evaluations and recommendations on July 12, 2004. On July 15, the Council filed all the judicial evaluations and recommendations, as well as a two-page description of the Council's judicial evaluation process, by transmitting these materials to the Division in the form of Microsoft Word e-mail attachments. In addition, the Council sent a CD and hard copies of the same information as a backup in the event the Division encountered problems with the documents in their e-mailed format. These filings conformed to the Division's regulations, which allow elee-tronic *241filing.19
The Council's two-page description of its evaluation process identified the judges covered in its evaluation as judges who were standing for the retention election, stating in relevant part:
[State laws require that the Judicial Council evaluate each judge standing for retention elections. Other laws require that the Judicial Council publish its evaluation in the Voters' Pamphlet. The evaluations of judges standing in the November 2004 election appear on the following pages.
The individual evaluations for Judges Nolan and Jeffery disclosed the judicial districts in which they were running and summarized the information the Council had evaluated. Specifically, Judges Nolan's and Jeffery's evaluations revealed that the Council had surveyed and received ratings from 2,927 attorneys; 1,495 peace and probation officers; jurors appearing before the judges in 2002 and 2008; court employees; and an independent, community-based, volunteer court-observer organization. In addition, the judges' evaluations noted that the Council had
completed a background investigation including a court records check, a disciplinary records check, a review of conflict of interest statements submitted to the court system and a review of financial disclosure statements submitted to the Alaska Public Offices Commission. Attorneys, peace officers, court employees and jurors were asked to submit written comments about the judges. The Council actively encouraged the public to comment, both in writing and in a statewide public hearing teleconference.
Based on the totality of this information, the Council recommended that the public, vote to retain both judges.
On July 26, 2004, the Council issued a statewide press release announcing that, "after a comprehensive evaluation of judicial performance," it had "found all ten judges standing for retention in the 2004, general election [to be] qualified." The Council also recommended that voters retain each judge. The press release set out a detailed description of the Council's retention process, explained that "Alaska law requires the Judicial Council to evaluate every judge standing for retention and to make the evaluations public." The press release also included a 2004 Judicial Evaluation Summary disclosing various survey ratings received by each judge assessing their performance in office. _
B. The Commission's Role in the Process
Under Alaska law, the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct also plays a role in the judicial retention process, albeit a considerably more limited role than the one played by the Council. Like the Council, the Commission is an independent state ageney established under the Alaska Constitution.20 The Commission's primary constitutional duty is to investigate complaints of judicial misconduct and to recommend the imposition of appropriate sanctions by the Alaska Supreme Court.21 The Alaska Constitution gives the legislature authority to establish the Commission's specific powers and duties.22
One such duty, set out in AS 22.30.011(h), requires that, when a judge files a declaration of candidacy to stand for retention, the Commission must give the Council a report disclosing any public discipline imposed against that judge, so that the discipline will be included with the Council's evaluation in the Election Pamphlet.23 As evidenced by *242the Council's 2004 evaluations, the Commission reports the required information to the Council during the course of the Council's retention investigation, well in advance of the August 1 deadline for judges to file declarations with the Division.24 Thus, in performing its statutory duty to report any public discipline imposed on a judge who "has filed a declaration of candidacy for retention in office," the Commission, like the Council, considers any judge under active review by the Council to be a judge who has filed a declaration.
C. The Division's Role in the Process
Under Alaska law, the director of the Division of Elections has a duty to provide general administrative supervision over state elections.25 This general duty encompasses the duty to supervise judicial retention elections. Each judge seeking retention must pay a filing fee and file a declaration of candidacy with the Division by August 1 of the year in which the election will be held.26 Apart from requiring judges to designate the judicial district in which retention is sought, the Election Code does not prescribe any particular form for the declaration or specify what information it must contain.27 The Division has adopted a declaration form for retention elections that requires judges to provide contact information and to have their signatures notarized. As recognized in today's opinion, the Division does not demand strict adherence to this declaration form; but it does require, at a minimum, that the declaration "contain a personal, affirmative declaration of the judge to be a candidate."28 Once a declaration is properly filed, the Division must place the judge's name on the retention ballot;29 the Division must also include the judge in the Election Pamphlet, along with the Council's evaluation and recommendation on retention.30
III. ANALYSIS
A. The Council's Evaluations Amounted to Timely and Statutorily Authorized Filings of Declarations of Candidacy Made by the Judges.
Here, applying its own interpretation of what a minimally acceptable declaration must contain, the Division contends that the Council's retention evaluations-filed with the Division by e-mail on July 15, 2004-were not minimally acceptable as declarations of candidacy. Though acknowledging that "the legislature provided little guidance ... as to whether a given communication qualifies as a 'declaration of candidacy," today's opinion reasons that this ambiguity gave the Division "a certain degree of discretion" in deciding what to accept as a proper disclosure.31 Deferring to the Division's expertise, today's opinion accepts its interpretation, finding that it is supported by the facts and has a reasonable basis in law.32
But the opinion and the state both mistalk-enly treat the judicial retention process as essentially a one-ageney ship with the Division alone at the helm. As shown in the description above, the process in fact requires the participation and cooperation of three separate state agencies; and the legislature has assigned the initial, and in many respects the primary, responsibility for steering the course of the process to the Council, not the Division. While the law undeniably requires judges seeking retention to declare *243their candidacy to the Division, it independently empowers the Council to determine for itself which judges have declared their intent to run for retention. When the Council determines that a judge does intend to run, the law further requires it to investigate and evaluate the judge and to file its evaluation and recommendation with the Division.
When viewed as a whole, it seems apparent that this legislatively mandated process gives both the Council and the Division independent authority to elicit, receive, and act on declarations of candidacy from eligible judges who are seeking retention. Yet nowhere does the law empower either agency to restrict, ignore, or override a determination formally made by the other in performing its part of the process.
As noted above, when the Council sends a retention questionnaire to a judge eligible for retention, the questionnaire is expressly directed to "Judges Standing for Retention" and "Candidates for Judicial Retention." A judge who completes and returns the questionnaire thus unequivocally declares the intent to stand for retention; and in so doing, the judge provides the Council with the information it needs to investigate and evaluate the judge's performance. The completed questionnaire thus enables and authorizes the Council to undertake its investigation-which the Council would otherwise have no authority to conduct.
By returning the retention questionnaire, then, the judge initiates a formal administrative process that treats the judge as a declared candidate; announces the judge to be running for retention; investigates the judge's qualifications and performance; and ultimately leads to the filing of a statutorily mandated report with the Division that evaluates the judge as a candidate standing for retention and recommends how the public should vote. Furthermore, the evaluation communicates to the Division all the information the Division requires to be included in a declaration of candidacy for judicial retention.
It follows that, when the Council files its evaluation with the Division on or before the August 1 deadline for declaring candidacy, the filing actually complies with all statutory prerequisites for a timely and properly filed declaration .of candidacy. Just as a final judgment issued by a court stands as evidence that the underlying facts and law necessary to support the judgment have been determined and are no longer in question, so the Council's evaluation, upon being filed with the Division, establishes the Council's formal determination that the evaluated judge has in fact declared the intent to stand on the ballot and qualifies as a candidate for retention. The Division has no more authority to disregard or reinterpret the Council's formal determination that a judge is standing for retention than it does to disregard or reinterpret the Council's evaluation of the judge's performance.
B. The Council's Evaluations Substantially Complied with the Division's Own Prescribed Declaration Form.
This is not to say that the Division, in performing its own assigned duties in the overall retention process, lacks authority to require something else from the judge by way of a declaration. Here, by promulgating its own declaration of candidacy form for judges seeking retention, the Division chose to require a specific form of declaration that differs from the declaration embedded in the judicial evaluation reports filed by the Council. As the court correctly observes in today's opinion, because "the statutes are silent with regard to what substance a filing must have to be considered a judge's 'declaration of candidacy," 33 the Division has authority to adopt its own declaration form and to require judges seeking retention to comply with it-just as the Council has authority to decide what a judge should be required to submit in order to declare candidacy to the Council for purposes of initiating its retention evaluation process. But as the court also acknowledges, the Division has broad discretion to accept declarations that are timely filed but fail to conform exactly to the Division's declaration form.34
*244Moreover, although the Division unquestionably had authority to promulgate and enforce its own declaration requirement, its prescribed disclosure form is not the exclusive form authorized by the legislature. As already indicated, in fulfilling its duty to evaluate judges seeking retention, the Council had independent statutory authority to ask judges to declare their candidacy to the Council; and within its sphere of operation, the Council, not the Division, had the authority to determine what constituted a valid declaration of candidacy. Viewing the retention process as a whole, it seems fair to conclude that both the Division's form of declaration and the form recognized by the Council met the broad and largely undefined statutory requirement for a declaration. Accordingly, on July 15, 2004, when the Council filed retention evaluations with the Division that reflected the Council's official determination that all judges evaluated were declared candidates for retention, its filing communicated to the Division a timely and statutorily compliant declaration of candidacy by the judges.
Because the Council filed its evaluations before the Division's deadline for candidate declarations and because the evaluations complied with the statutory requirement for a declaration, the proper standard for determining whether the evaluations passed muster under the Division's prescribed disclosure form should be whether they substantially complied with the Division's preseribed form, not whether they strictly complied. Given the bifurcated allocation of institutional responsibilities that defines Alaska's judicial retention process, the Election Code's provisions requiring a judge's declaration of candidacy to be filed in the form of a declaration to the Division-rather than as a declaration originally made to the Council and later forwarded to the Division as part of the Council's required filing-amounts to a requirement of form rather than substance. And in the arena of election filings, we have consistently recognized that, so long as a filing is timely and complies with all substantive requirements imposed by law, any technical or formal deficiencies in the filing are insubstantial and may be corrected after filing.35
Here, the information included in the Council's evaluations covered all of the substantive information required by the Division's declaration form. In my view, it follows that the Division had authority to accept the July 15 filings as timely and properly filed declarations of candidacy, subject to correction to ensure compliance with the Division's own formal and technical standards.36
C. The State's Arguments Fail To Support Its Position that the Council's Evaluations Could Not Be Considered To Be Declarations of Candidacy.
The state vigorously argues that the judges' failure to file personal declarations with the Division caused substantial institutional harm in light of the intended purposes of requiring judges to declare their candidacy to the Division. The state points out that the Alaska Constitution's retention requirement implicitly demands that judges formally declare their candidacy; the state further points out that the Alaska Statutes specifically require judges to submit their declarations to the Division. According to the state, accepting the Couneil's evaluations as a substitute for a direct declaration by the judges to the Division would frustrate many of the purposes served by these declaration requirements. But the state's position turns on the mistaken premise that the Division plays the only significant role in the judicial retention process and that the Division's view of the law controls the entire process. When the judicial retention process is realistically viewed in totality, as we must properly view it, none of the specific points advanced by the state stands up to scrutiny.
*2451. Construing the Council's evaluations to be properly filed declarations of candidacy does not violate the purposes of the statutory declaration requirement.
As already described at considerable length, although Alaska requires judges to file declarations with the Division, the law also gives the Council the authority to require judges eligible for retention to formally declare to the Council their intent to stand for retention. The Council systematically does just that. After judges declare their intent to seek retention by returning retention questionnaires, the Council conducts an investigation, prepares an evaluation, and, in compliance with the express requirements of the law, notifies the Division of its evaluations of all judges who, in the Council's view, have declared their intent to stand for retention. The state nevertheless argues that the law places the burden on the judge, not on the Council, to make an affirmative declaration; the state further suggests that reliance on the Council's evaluations improperly shifts the burden away from the judge. But since the Council is obligated by law to act on and inform the Division of the judge's declaration, a judge who submits an official declaration of candidacy to the Council meets the burden of making an affirmative declaration no less effectively than by submitting it directly to the Division.
The state also argues that the e-mailed evaluations in question here failed to satisfy the purposes of the statutory filing requirement for various other reasons. According to the state, the evaluations failed to meet the fundamental purpose of authorizing the Director to place an eligible judge on the ballot. But this argument is essentially circular: it assumes that the Director had no authority because the Director declined to view the Council's evaluation as establishing a declaration. As indicated above, this point of view misperceives the law governing the retention process as a whole. Although the Division's uncertainty about the legal significance of the Council's evaluations may be understandable, this uncertainty springs from legal confusion inherent in a retention process that adopts a broad statutory definition of declarations that multiple agencies must apply. Had the Director correctly interpreted and applied the law governing the retention process as a whole, there would have been no basis to conclude that the Division lacked authority to act on the Council's evaluations. The usual solution for confusion created by uncertain legal requirements lies in clarifying the law through judicial interpretation or legislative amendment to avoid future problems-not in disqualifying judges from the ballot.37
The state raises a nearly identical argument in contending that the evaluations failed to satisfy a second basic purpose of the declaration requirement: to assist the Division in conducting orderly elections. The state insists that "ilt is not the Director's responsibility to puzzle out whether" the evaluations amounted to declarations. But again, if a puzzle existed, it arose from the lack of clarity in the statutory language surrounding the current retention process, coupled with the fact that no prior case had ever presented the problem raised here. Moreover, the record hardly supports the state's suggestion that the status of Judges Jeffery and Nolan created an actual puzzle. To the contrary, correspondence between the Division and the Council unequivocally shows that both understood that the retention evaluations covered only those judges whom the Council considered to be "the judges standing for retention."
For example, the Division's Suzanne Mullen showed that she understood this in her June 8, 2004, e-mail to the Council, which asked for "the mailing addresses for the 10 candidates for 2004"-not for the twelve judges who were originally eligible for retention. The Council's Susan McKelvie confirmed this understanding in her June 10 email to Mullen, stating, "I am in the process of creating the pages and will send them immediately after the Council meets in mid-July to vote on the judges standing for retention."
Indeed, it seems difficult to imagine how the Division could have misunderstood that *246the Council had independently asked eligible judges to declare their intent to run for retention. As the state acknowledges in its briefing, the legislature has assigned the Council the duty of "providing evaluations for judges who have declared their candidacy and are therefore qualified to appear on the ballot." Given that the Council must begin its evaluation process months in advance of the Division's deadline for filing declarations and routinely files its evaluations with the Division before the deadline expires, it seems evident that the Council can fulfill its statutory duty only by independently asking all judges eligible for retention to declare to the Council whether they actually intend to stand for retention.
According to the state, yet another purpose of a declaration that the Council's evaluations fail to address is the need for clarity as to the precise date when the judge's declaration is filed. For instance, the state points out that the filing of a declaration triggers the deadline for registering with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. But this argument overlooks the fact that all judges eligible for retention are supposed to have already filed APOC disclosures; and as expressly established on the face of the Council's retention evaluations, the Council checks for compliance with this requirement as part of its background investigation of the judges who declare their intent to run.
The state likewise points out that the filing of a declaration triggers the Commission's duty to inform the Council of disciplinary actions against judges who are up for retention.38 Yet as already emphasized above, the Commission provides these reports to the Council during the course of the Council's investigation of the judges standing for retention; thus, when the Commission carries out its statutory mandate to report disciplinary sanctions to the Council, it views all judges who are undergoing the evaluation process as already having declared their candidacy-regardless of whether they have formally submitted a declaration to the Division.
The state further maintains that the Council's filing of retention evaluations fails to serve the purpose of a declaration by depriving the public of its right to know who the retention candidates will actually be. The state points out that the filing of a declaration with the Division triggers a ten-day period allowing voters to challenge the declared candidate's eligibility to stand for retention.39 It argues that if the public does not know who has declared, its ability to challenge the judges will be lost. But this argument yet again presupposes that the Division correctly chose to disregard the evaluations' compliance with the statutory requirement for a proper declaration; thus, the asserted lack of clarity is largely self-created. More importantly, the state's position ignores the reality that the Council's evaluation process is itself a formal, statutorily authorized administrative process that treats the judges who are undergoing evaluation as officially declared candidates and extensively advertises them as judges standing for retention.
Here, because of the widespread publicity the Council gave to the retention process and the open invitation it extended for the public to participate in evaluating the judges who were actually running, by the time the August 1 deadline for filing formal declarations with the Division arrived, the Council had already fully informed the electorate that the judges it was evaluating were officially declared candidates for retention. Likewise, it had already actively encouraged all interested members of the public to comment on the judges' qualifications for continued service in office. Any member of the public wishing to challenge the eligibility of one or more judges would have had ample opportunity to raise the challenge by communicating it to the Council, without having to worry about the time constraints imposed under the Division's regulations.
From the standpoint of the public, then, the judges were officially recognized candidates for retention well before the August 1 *247deadline. Their recognition became official precisely because of the Council's statutory role in the retention process: by creating this role for the Council, the legislature gave it the primary duty of ensuring that the public received adequate notice of and an opportunity to challenge candidates. The Council performed this role both by identifying and evaluating all judges who declared an intent to stand for retention and by establishing an open and public evaluation process that maximized the electorate's opportunity to comment on and challenge the judges choosing to seek retention. In the context of the retention process as a whole, the Division's regulation allowing a ten-day opportunity to raise a challenge simply duplicates an opportunity already offered by the Council.
The state further suggests that if the Division allowed the Council's evaluation to replace a timely declaration filed directly by the judge seeking retention, its action would frustrate the declaration requirement's purpose of treating all candidates equally; in the state's view, judges must be held to the same standard of compliance as all other candidates. But while this argument is unassailable in the abstract, it overlooks the reality that Alaska's law establishes a judicial retention process that openly treats judges differently than any other category of candidate-both in providing that judges run unopposed on the ballot and in requiring that those who do run for retention must undergo an intensive public process that requires their qualifications and performance to be evaluated by the Council and reported to the public in the Division's Election Pamphlet. These unique provisions in the law pertaining to the judicial retention process account for the differences in compliance that result from the requirements of the process. But at bottom, the same general principle applies here that governs other election-filing requirements: when a required filing is timely, proper in all substantive respects, and deficient only in technical or formal ways that do not impair the requirement's basic purposes and goals, the absence of strict compliance should not bar a candidate from appearing on the ballot.40
2. The state's remaining arguments are unpersuasive.
Besides arguing that the Council's evaluations failed to serve the basic purposes of the declaration requirement, the state contends that declarations of candidacy made to the Council in November 2008-when the judges submitted their retention questionnaires, would be too unreliable to be acceptable in August 2004-when the Division's deadline for declarations expired. This argument makes little sense: under this theory, a judge's early declaration filed with the Division itself would be equally unreliable and would become subject to question as the deadline approached. Moreover, in asserting that an early declaration to the Council might not reflect "a final decision to run," the state incorrectly assumes that the goal of a declaration requirement is to elicit a "final decision," rather than just a clear declaration of present intent. No declaration need ever be "final" at the time it is made-to the contrary, declared candidates for judicial retention remain free to withdraw from the race and may have their names removed from the ballot unless they act so late in the process that removal is no longer feasible.41 The state offers no reason to suspect that a judge who decides to withdraw after formally declaring candidacy to the Council would be more likely to withdraw early than a judge who declared directly to the Division.
*248As a final point, the state suggests in its reply brief that the Council's evaluation is legally unacceptable as a declaration because the Council lacked authority to act on behalf of the judges. Relying on the Restatement (Second) of Agency, the state insists that, because the judges failed to manifest consent for the Council to act on their behalf in declaring their candidacy to the Division, and because the Council never consented to undertake this responsibility, no viable agency relationship ever arose.42 But the state mistakenly focuses on the notion of agency by consent-the topic addressed by the Restatement. The Restatement expressly disclaims any attempt to cover agency-like relationships arising by statute rather than by consent.43 Here, the Council's duty to evaluate candidates and report its evaluations to the Division arises under a specific provision of law; the Council has always interpreted its mandate as requiring it to evaluate only those judges actually "standing for retention"-not all judges eligible to be on the ballot; and judges effectively give their "consent" to have their declarations of candidacy filed with the Division when they submit their retention questionnaires to the Council-thereby authorizing the Council to treat them as declared candidates and to inform the Division of its evaluation of them as candidates standing for retention.
IV. SUMMARY
A. Summary of Position on Removal from Office
In short, by choosing to submit the Council's questionnaire, a judge ultimately causes to be filed with the Division an evaluation by the Council that officially confirms the judge to be a declared retention candidate and evaluates the judge's qualifications as a candidate. When timely filed before the August 1 deadline, the Council's evaluation meets the statutory requirement for a timely declaration filed by the judge with the Division. And because it supplies all information required by the Division's declaration form, the Council's evaluation also substantially complies with the Division's required form. Finally, accepting the Council's evaluation as a properly filed declaration does not undermine any purpose or goal of the statutory declaration requirement; nor does it treat judges differently than other candidates except insofar as the law governing the judicial retention process provides for different treatment. In my view, under these ciream-stances, the judges' failure to strictly comply with the Division's required declaration form did not warrant their disqualification from the ballot.
Accordingly, I disagree with the court's decision removing the judges from the bench. In my view, removal is unnecessary as a matter of law, unsound as a practical matter, and disserves the interests of justice and voters alike. Despite widespread publicity concerning the judges' violations and despite the heavily publicized legal controversy generated by their conduct, the electorate voted to retain both judges by margins that fell solidly within the norm received by other judges on the same ballot. Removing these judges from the bench will nullify the clear intent of a fully informed electorate. At the same time it will deprive the people of Alaska of a resource not easily replaced: the judges' knowledge, experience, training, and judgment. Removal will also needlessly force the court system and the state to absorb the cost and disruption of recruiting, appointing, and training new judges-all in the name of strict compliance. Yet strict compliance is not a goal in itself. And it can serve no purpose as a remedy for inattentive conduct that, by systemic design, had no substantive consequences-and apparently never caused a shred of actual doubt about the judges' intentions to run for retention.
B. Violations of Judicial Conduct Code/Attorney's Fee Award
By no means do I suggest that the judges' inattention to the Division's formal require*249ment should be condoned. To the contrary, even though their failure to file personal declarations turned out to be merely technical violations, the judges' inattention to the filing requirement nevertheless failed to comport with their ethical duty to maintain the highest standards of judicial conduct.44 Although the noncompliance here does not warrant removal, I think that it certainly warrants investigation by the Commission and potentially justifies imposition of public reprimand as a sanction. For the same reason, I would conclude that the superior court's award of prevailing-party fees to the judges was inappropriate. Even as technical violations, the judges' conduct raised serious concerns and predictably led to this litigation. Given the novel issues raised by the judges' conduct and the compelling nature of the state's duty to enforce Alaska's election laws, the Division and the state could hardly have been expected to overlook the judges' violations-whether technical or not. In my view, equity and the interests of justice must bar the judges from recovering prevailing-party attorney's fees, even though their non-compliance does not warrant removing them from office. Today's opinion will require the superior court to vacate its award of attorney's fees to the judges. To this extent I concur in the opinion.
v. CONCLUSION
For these reasons, I dissent from today's decision ordering the judges removed from the bench but concur in vacating the superior court's award of fees.

. See Alaska Const. art. IV, §§ 5, 6; AS 15.15.030(10); AS 22.10.150; AS 22.15.195.

. Alaska Const. art. IV, § 6.

. Alaska Const. art. IV, § 6; AS 15.35.030; AS 22.05.100.

. AS 15.35.053; AS 22.07.060.

. Alaska Const. art. IV, § 6; AS 15.35.060; AS 22.10.150.

. AS 15.35.100; AS 22.15.195.

. See AS 22.10.150; AS 22.15.195.

. AS 22.30.010.

. See AS 15.10.105(a). Alaska law dealing with the requirements of the retention process variously attaches responsibilities to the Division of Elections, the director of the Division, and the lieutenant governor. As a practical matter, these distinctions are inconsequential, since the Division falls under the supervision of the lieutenant governor and the director heads the Division. Unless context requires otherwise, this dissent will simply refer to "the Division." See id.

. See Alaska Const. art. IV, § 9.

. See id.

. Alaska Statute 22.05.100 provides:
Each supreme court justice is subject to approval or rejection as provided in AS 15 (Alaska Election Code). The judicial council shall conduct an evaluation of each justice before the retention election and shall provide to the public information about that justice and may provide a recommendation regarding retention or rejection. The information and any recommendation shall be made public at least 60 days before the retention election. The judicial council shall also provide the information and any recommendation to the office of the lieutenant governor in time for publication in the election pamphlet under AS 15.58.050. If a majority of those voting on the question rejects the candidacy, the rejected justice may not be appointed to fill any vacancy in the supreme court, court of appeals, superior court, or district courts of the state for a penod of four years thereafter.
Alaska Statutes 22.07.060, 22.10.150, and 22.15.195 establish identical requirements with respect to judges of the court of appeals, the superior court, and the district court.

. Alaska Statute 15.58.050 states:
No later than August 7 of the year in which the state general election will be held, the judicial council shall file with the lieutenant governor a statement including information about each supreme court justice, court of appeals judge, superior court judge, and district court judge who will be subject to a retention election. The statement shall reflect the evaluation of each justice or judge conducted by the judicial council according to law and shall contain a brief statement describing each public reprimand, public censure, or suspension received by the judge under AS 22.30.011(d) during the period covered in the evaluation. A statement may not exceed 600 words.

. See Alaska Judicial Council, Alaska Judicial Council Retention Evaluation Program, in Araska Juptciat Counci, twenty-rairp Report: 2005-2006 to tee LecistaturE anp Supreme Court app. F (2007), available at http://www .aje.state.ak.us/reports/23 rdReport.pdf.

. See id.

. AS 15.58.050.

. Indeed, by returning the questionnaires, not only do the responding judges literally declare themselves to be "Candidates for Judicial Retention," but they sometimes respond to specific questions with statements that clearly confirm their active intent to continue serving as judges. For example, in response to the questionnaire's request to comment on her judicial performance during her current term, Judge Nolan outlined areas of her current accomplishments and went on to emphasize: "I expect to continue and expand these efforts in the future. I hope to address reform to the current District Court calendaring system to better serve the public and promote judicial well-being."

. Alaska Judicial Council, Retention Evaluation Information, http://www.aje.state.ak.us/ Retention/retent.htm (last visited Oct. 26, 2007).

. See, eg., 6 AAC 25.1700(b).

. See Alaska Const. art. IV, § 10.

. See id.

. See id.

. Alaska Statute 22.30.011(b) states:
If a judge has been publicly reprimanded, suspended, or publicly censured under this section and the judge has filed a declaration of candidacy for retention in office, the commission shall report to the judicial council for inclusion in the statement filed by the judicial council under AS 15.58.050 each public reprimand, suspension, or public censure received by the judge
(1) since appointment; or
*242(2) if the judge has been retained by election, since the last retention election of the judge.

. The timing of the Commission's report is evident because, when filed with the Division on July 15, 2004, the Council's evaluations expressly declared that the Council had already completed "a disciplinary records check" for both Judge Nolan and Judge Jeffery.

. See AS 15.35.070.

. See, e.g., AS 15.35.070; AS 15.35.071; AS 15.35.110; AS 15.35.120.

. See, e.g., AS 15.35.080; AS 15.35.130.

. Majority at 232 (quoting the state's reply brief al 8).

. See, e.g., AS 15.35.090; AS 15.35.130.

. AS 15.58.050.

. Majority at 231.

. Majority at 231.

. Majority at 231.

. See Majority at 231.

. See, e.g., Grimm v. Wagoner, 77 P.3d 423, 429-31 (Alaska 2003).

. If deemed equivalent to a declaration of candidacy, the Council's evaluations also would have failed to comply with the separate statutory provision requiring a filing fee to be paid for a declaration. See, eg., AS 15.35.071; AS 15.35.120. The state has not claimed that it lacks authority to relax the filing fee deadline when an otherwise timely and proper declaration of candidacy is submitted without the proper fee.

. See generally, e.g., Div. of Elections of State v. Johnstone, 669 P.2d 537 (Alaska 1983).

. See AS 22.30.011(h) (requiring the Commission to inform the Council of any public disciplinary actions taken or pending against a judge when "the judge has filed a declaration of candidacy for retention").

. See 6 AAC 25.260(a).

. See Grimm, 77 P.3d at 430; see also Ruiz v. Sylva, 102 Cal.App.4th 199, 125 Cal.Rptr.2d 351, 361 (2002) ("[slubstantial compliance ... means actual compliance in respect to the substance essential to every reasonable objective of the statute" (emphasis in original) (citation omitted)); cf. Williams v. Clark County Dist. Attorney, 118 Nev. 473, 50 P.3d 536, 540-41 (2002) (timely petition challenging residency of candidate ruled valid despite lack of supporting affidavit attesting to petitioner's personal knowledge because later-filed affidavit ensured that every reasonable objective of the statute was met and therefore established substantial compliance).

. House Bill 253, introduced May 3, 2007, would fill the current void in the law by providing that candidates for judicial retention may remove their names from the election ballot only . by filing a notice of withdrawal with the Division at least 48 days before the election.

. See Restatement (SEconp) or Acency §§ 1, 7, 15 (1958).

. Id. Scope Note at 2 ("Likewise, various cases of non-consensual representation are not dealt with [in the Restatement (Seconp) or AcEncy], as where a statute provides that service of process may be made upon a designated public official as 'agent' for a non-resident motorist. ...").

. See Alaska Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 1.