4 Special Coverage

Alaska’s election results will take some time to come in following Election Day.

Though officials will begin releasing first-round results starting shortly after the polls close at 8 p.m. Tuesday, in close races, there’s only so much Alaskans will know on election night. In any race where no candidate gets 50% of the vote, any victory celebrations will have to wait until at least Nov. 20.

That’s partly due to the state’s long window for absentee ballots to arrive after Election Day. Though they have to be postmarked by Election Day, mail ballots can arrive up to 10 days after Election Day from within the U.S., or up to 15 days for those mailed from outside the U.S., said Brian Jackson, the election program manager for the Alaska Division of Elections. That’s one reason tallies that are reported election night will only include a portion of the ballots cast in the election.

“We’ll count Election Day votes on Election Day, of course. [Also] included in the election night tallies will be the early voting ballots voted through Halloween, … as well as some absentee ballots,” Jackson said.

The exact cutoff for absentee ballots to be counted on Election Day varies by region, Jackson said. It depends on how busy the regional elections office is. But in any case — there will be a significant number of votes that have not been counted.

Those can add up to a significant fraction of the overall total. In 2022, some 60,000 votes were counted after the final report on election night. That’s almost a quarter — 22.7% — of all votes cast in that election.

And while those who are ahead on election night often maintain their lead once all ballots are counted, that’s not always the case.

Looking again at 2022: at 1 a.m. the morning after Election Day, Kelly Tshibaka had a roughly 3,000-vote lead in first-place votes. By the time all the votes were counted two weeks later, Lisa Murkowski had pulled ahead by some 2,000 first-place votes.

(In that race, it didn’t really matter who was in first place.They both made it to the final round of ranked choice tabulation, where Murkowski wound up winning. But it goes to show: votes counted after Election Day can make a significant difference.)

So, for that matter, can the order in which voters rank their choices. All that’s reported on Election Day — and the seven- and 10-day counts after Election Day — are first-choice votes.

If it’s close between the second and third place candidates, or the third and fourth place, a small number of votes can make a difference. So, Jackson said, election officials run the ranked choice tabulation on one day, Nov. 20, to “include as many countable ballots in it as possible.”

There’s not much the Division of Elections can do to speed up the process, Jackson said. The division could tabulate the ranked choice votes more frequently with a change in state regulation, but ultimately, the deadlines for absentee ballots to arrive are set in state law.

“It would take legislation to change this to make it faster,” he said.

All of that said: voters should expect the first results “somewhere in the neighborhood” of 8:30 or 9:00 p.m., Jackson said. The Division of Elections anticipates publishing updated counts every 30 to 40 minutes thereafter, until about 11 p.m., when updates start to slow as officials wait for the state’s rural hand-count precincts to call in their votes, he said.

“Our goal is to try and report 100% of the precincts” on election night, Jackson said.

Jackson also emphasized that the state’s vote-counting process features a variety of safeguards against both technical errors and intentional malfeasance.

Voting machines are tested by a bipartisan board twice ahead of the election to ensure they function properly, he said. Absentee and early votes are counted in secure areas of regional elections offices.

Some polling places in remote communities failed to open, or opened late, during the primary election in August, leaving hundreds unable to vote in that election. In 2022, some ballots didn’t arrive from rural Alaska precincts until after the general election had been certified.

Jackson said the division has plans in place to ensure that people across the state are able to vote if polling places or election workers are unavailable. He said the division “works very hard to check in with our workers ahead of Election Day.”

At the same time, Jackson said, “things do happen.” Election workers may get sick or be otherwise unavailable. A building where voting was supposed to take place may be inaccessible.

“If something like that were to happen, we would try and reach out to a community partner, someone that we could get additional materials to, and get somebody in the community to kind of raise their hand and and do what they can to ensure that Alaskan voters are able to vote on Election Day in their community,” Jackson said.

There have already been some missteps ahead of Election Day. The Anchorage Daily News reported that more than 90 voters at absentee-in-person voting locations in Dillingham, Aniak and King Salmon were given the wrong ballots during the early voting period, listing judges for the Fourth Judicial District rather than the correct Third Judicial District. Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said the division would contact the voters and allow them to either cast new ballots or have their already-cast ballots counted with the exception of the incorrect judicial races.

After Election Day, the state has safeguards in place to ensure votes are counted accurately, Jackson said. The Division of Elections also details the checks on its process in a document posted on its website.

Boards that determine whether absentee and questioned ballot voters are qualified are bipartisan, Jackson said, and observers are allowed at every stage of the process. Jackson says no part of the process occurs behind closed doors.

“There can be many eyes watching the process, being a part of the process, et cetera,” Jackson said.

There’s also a post-election audit conducted by the State Review Board. Jackson said the body is typically made up of 10 to 12 members, featuring at least two members from each of the two major parties. During that process, Jackson said, officials hand-count a random precinct’s ballots from each state House district to make sure the machine’s count matches the human count. If it’s off by more than 1%, all ballots would be counted by hand.

The process is meant to catch systematic counting errors in the tabulators used at most precincts, but a full hand-count has never been necessary since post-election audits began in 1998, Jackson said.

Though the final count is expected Nov. 20, the results are unofficial until the State Review Board certifies them. The target date for certification is Nov. 30.

Jackson said the board works on consensus: there’s “not really a collective vote at the end” to determine whether the review board should certify the election, he said.

“The board really works as a team,” he said. “Everybody trusts the work that everybody else is doing in the room. We share information with each other — issues that might come up — so everybody’s in the know, because they all sign off on each other’s work at the end, certifying the election.”

State law says the director of the Division of Elections “shall certify” the winners after the review board completes its work.

KTOO will carry Alaska Public Media’s live state election coverage from 9 to 11 p.m. on Tuesday. That follows special live election coverage from NPR with all the highlights from around the country.

Spending in Alaska’s U.S. House race has exceeded $40 million, putting it near the top of the list of the most expensive House races in the country.

The fundraising operations of Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich haven’t been slouching. Combined, they’ve raised a total of more than $13 million, with Peltola, the incumbent, outraising Begich five to one.

But that sum is dwarfed by the $28 million that’s come from political committees and other groups buying their own ads and otherwise trying to convince you to vote for or against one of the Alaska candidates. The total of the independent spending isn’t just big in comparison to what the candidates have raised. It’s big on a national scale.

“I was actually really shocked that Alaska is the fourth race in terms of Super PAC spending this cycle,” said Sarah Bryner, research director for OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics. “This one is seen as a gettable win for the Republicans, and that’s not common this cycle, and so they’re going to do what they can to pick that up, presuming that they will also lose some of their races in other places.”

Democrats are trying just as hard to keep the seat.

The money is an indicator of how uncertain the outcome in the Alaska race is, and how important each seat is in a closely divided Congress. Alaska isn’t a swing state in the Presidential election, but it could swing control of the U.S. House.

The outside spending is almost divided evenly between Peltola and Begich. It comes to more than $13 million for each side, most of it spent on negative advertising.

Bryner noticed something else interesting about the outside groups spending on the Alaska race: Most are part of the national party infrastructure, like the Republican and Democratic congressional campaign committees.

“It is pretty wild, actually, that the funding for this is almost entirely the party committees, or their related Super PACs. Because that’s not normal,” she said. “Usually you have some other PAC involved, some interest or, you know, the oil industry or something. But this is clearly just the two parties squabbling over who’s going to get this seat, and very little other spending.”

(The “other” spenders include some deep pockets, though. Vote Alaska Before Party, which is working to reelect Peltola and previously helped Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, has spent more than $8 million on the 2024 House race. And Fairshake PAC, representing the cryptocurrency industry, has spent nearly $2 million to promote Peltola.)

The other reason the Alaska race is attracting so much money is that there aren’t a lot of other races that are worth investing in. Political Science Professor Bernard Tamas at Valdosta State University said that’s a trend that’s been building for 50 years.

“it’s gotten really extreme, with only a handful of districts that the major parties actually consider competitive,” he said.

Gerrymandering is a factor, he said. In many large-population states, district lines are intentionally drawn to favor one party or the other.

“But there are a number of others that actually might be even larger in terms of what’s leading to this,” he said, citing demographics, education and economic variation.

He said voters are sorting themselves into ideologically similar areas as they look for jobs and choose to live in urban or rural communities.

But Alaska, with its one U.S. House seat, can’t be gerrymandered for a federal race, and its House member represents people from across the spectrum.

Alaska voters in 2020 adopted a new way to elect candidates, pairing an open primary with ranked choice voting in the general.

This election, Ballot Measure 2 asks voters whether they want to make history again by becoming the first state to ditch ranked choice voting and go back to partisan primaries.

The No on 2 campaign is trying to persuade Alaskans to keep what they have, equating the open primary, where all candidates appear on the same ballot, with freedom.

“We don’t have to choose a ballot and limit our choices,” said Juli Lucky, who leads No on 2. “We can vote for anybody we want, and we can also vote for people from a different party. So if you’d like a Republican in one race, an independent in one race, a Democrat in another race, our open primary allows you to do that.”

Alaska’s system is lauded nationally as a way to end hyperpolarized politics and promote bipartisan compromise. And, largely from Outside sources, No on 2 has raised more than $12 million. It’s outspending Yes on 2 by 100 to 1.

Yet the ballot measure has a good chance of passing because the open primary and ranked choice is unpopular among Alaska conservatives.

Former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, a Republican, argues that parties should be able to close their primary to voters of a different affiliation.

“Why should somebody who’s registered as a Democrat vote in the Republican primary, to choose who their candidate is going to run against?” Leman asked, on a recent episode of “Alaska Insight”. “What do you think they’re going to do? Going to low-ball somebody, or, you know, pick somebody that will be a weaker candidate.”

While opponents claim that the voting system was imposed on Alaska by Outside interests, Anchorage attorney Scott Kendall says he came up with the idea. He said he saw the need for it when he was chief of staff to Gov. Bill Walker, trying to get legislators to address the state’s fiscal crisis, among other issues. For two years, Kendall said, he couldn’t loosen legislators from their gridlock.

“They all feared being ‘primaried’ – you know, primary as a verb — that if they didn’t toe the party line, they would get taken out,” he said. “We created a system that was designed for them to get reelected, but also designed for them to fail at their jobs.”

So in 2018, Kendall started thinking of a way to open the primary. He opted for a primary in which the top-four candidates advance to the general. And then he needed a way to narrow the field without creating the spoiler effect, where two candidates from the same party would split the vote and elect a competitor. That’s where ranked choice came in. Then Kendall said he started seeking money to mount a ballot measure campaign.

“Both inside the state, which we had a little bit of success (at), and then outside the state,” he said. “But the ideas and the writing of the measure was all done here in Alaska, by Alaskans.”

Alaska and Maine are the only states that have ranked choice voting for all or most state elections, though several cities use the method. In November, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon will vote on whether to employ ranked choice in future elections. Meanwhile, 10 Republican-led states ban ranked choice.

For many Alaska conservatives, the problem with ranked choice voting was exemplified the first time it was deployed, in the special election for U.S. House in 2022. Democrat Mary Peltola got more of the first-choice ballots than Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III. But the two Republicans combined got more votes than the single Democrat.

In theory, ranked choice should have healed that Republican split. If every Begich voter ranked Sarah Palin second, Palin would have won.

But Begich voters chose not to use their ballots that way.

Instead, barely more than half of Begich voters chose Palin second. Nearly a third voted for Peltola second. And about a fifth of Begich voters did not rank a second candidate.

So Peltola won. Palin did not get enough of the Begich vote to overtake Peltola’s lead.

To avoid a repeat, some Republicans pressed the message that voters should “rank the red,” even if they don’t like the system. Still, a similar thing happened in the regular election in November 2022: Peltola got more first-choice ballots than the other candidates, and the 2nd and 3rd rankings didn’t give Palin enough of a boost to overtake Peltola’s lead.

The lesson many Republicans took from this is that it’s bad to have two Republican candidates on the general ballot and the idea of ranking as a means of avoiding a spoiler effect hasn’t caught on.

Leman said ranked choice isn’t a good tool for that.

“It’s convoluted. It’s complex. It’s confusing to people,” he said.

Proponents of ranked choice say it’s so simple, even children get it. Lucky points to the low error rate on 2022 ballots as proof that the system isn’t difficult.

One person who has changed his view is Former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, who was a leading voice against ranked choice voting at first.

“Yeah, in 2020 I supported the effort to keep it the way it was, keep our primary, keep the general election, let the parties make the decision,” said Begich, uncle of House candidate Nick Begich III.

The former senator worried, among other things, that the new system might mean Democratic candidates would be shut out of the general election. Now, he said, he believes it encourages candidates to be less polarized, to campaign on who they are.

“I have changed my view, and I’ve seen it give voters much more choices. And I know there’s an effort now to get rid of it. I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

The repeal measure will appear on the ballot as Ballot Measure 2. A yes vote would do away with the open primary and ranked choice voting and replace them with party primaries and single-choice general elections. A no vote would keep the system that’s been in use since 2022.

The U.S. Postal Service is advising absentee voters to get their ballots in the mail as soon as possible if they want them to be counted.

“We continue to recommend that it is a good common-sense measure for voters who choose to mail in their ballots to do so before Election Day and at least a week before their election office needs to receive them. If a ballot is due on Election Day, the Postal Service recommends mailing the ballot by this Tuesday (October 29),” the agency said in a written statement on Monday.

Alaska’s absentee ballots can arrive up to 10 days after Election Day (for ballots mailed within the state) and 15 days after (for ballots mailed internationally), but only if the ballot was postmarked on or before Election Day.

In Alaska, most mail is automatically postmarked in Anchorage or Juneau, so a ballot mailed elsewhere in the state may not be postmarked for several days.

Mail your ballot early, or go inside a local post office and ask to have it postmarked by hand if you’re mailing it close to Election Day. You’ll need to have two stamps because of the weight of the ballot. The state doesn’t pay return postage.

Under Alaska law, anyone can vote absentee for any reason, but a voter has to request a ballot first. Unlike the municipal elections in Anchorage and Juneau, blank ballots are not automatically mailed to all voters.

The deadline for requesting a blank ballot by mail was last week, but voters can still download and print a blank ballot to be mailed.

The state does operate dozens of early voting and absentee-in-person locations where you can vote in advance of Election Day instead of risking the mail.

If you want to avoid the mail but still vote from home, you can vote by fax, submitting your ballot electronically.

Yes, we know that fax machines are practically nonexistent, but many smartphones have fax apps that allow you to scan and send documents securely.

For new voters, the deadline to register normally has passed, but federal law will allow you to register and vote in the state’s federal elections only.

More than 46,000 Alaskans have cast their ballots in person or by mail after a week of early voting, according to state elections officials. The Alaska Division of Elections celebrated what it described as “historic” turnout in a news release on Friday. Early and absentee votes submitted so far add up to roughly 11% of total turnout in 2020.

In-person voting was up more than 30% compared to 2020 during the first two days of early voting, according to Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher.

Who those 46,000 Alaskans have voted for will remain a mystery until counting begins on Election Day, but elections officials do release voters’ party registration information on a regular basis ahead of the final vote, which can provide some clues.

Campaigns on both sides of the aisle have increasingly urged voters to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, and partisan voters appear to be listening. Voters registered with a political party make up a greater share of the electorate so far than in 2020.

Republicans make up 34% of the early and absentee vote so far compared with 29% of total turnout in 2020. Democrats are responsible for 18% of the vote so far, compared with 16% in 2020.

Republicans make up an especially large share of the in-person early vote — 37% so far, compared with 29% in 2020 — while Democrats make up a disproportionately large percentage of absentee votes. Some 24% of absentee votes have come from Democrats, compared with 16% of all votes in 2020.

Early and absentee voting has grown steadily more popular in recent years. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 205,000 Alaskans voted early or absentee. That was a majority of all votes cast in that election.

A full list of early voting locations and their hours of operation are available at elections.alaska.gov/avo. Absentee ballots can also be dropped off at early voting locations or at Election Day precincts.

Polls are open on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

David Ottoson has owned Rainbow Foods, a natural grocery store in Juneau, for 44 years. Most of his 30 employees already earn more than $15 an hour, but a handful of highschoolers make $14. They all earn paid time off.

He said his wages are competitive with other grocery stores, and thinks it’s part of the reason he’s able to retain employees.

“$15 an hour isn’t that much,” he said. “During the pandemic, it was harder to find people, so we had to increase what we were willing to pay to get people to come to work.”

If passed, Ballot Measure One would raise the minimum wage from $11.73 to $13 in 2025, $14 in 2026 and $15 in 2027. Annual cost of living adjustments would begin in 2028.

Employers with more than 15 employees would be required to allow staff to accrue up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per year, and up to 40 hours if there’s less than 15 employees. It would also prohibit employers from making their employees attend meetings about religious or political issues, but some employers would be exempt.

Ottoson said he supports the measure because Alaskans shouldn’t have to choose between being sick and their paycheck.

“The value it has for keeping people who are at work from getting sick, from having germs spread from their fellow workers, I think, probably outweighs any cost that’s involved,” Ottoson said.

Ottoson is among over 120 small businesses owners that have joined a coalition in support of the measure, called Better Jobs for Alaska.

Supporters say the measure would boost consumer spending, improve retention, and that paid sick days are good for businesses. Opponents say the measure’s language is too vague and would have detrimental impacts to small businesses.

The Chamber of Commerce in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and the Alaska Chamber are among a group of business organizations and businesses that came together to oppose the voter initiative, called Protect Our Small Businesses & Jobs.

Alaska Chamber President and CEO Kati Capozzi said the measure’s language leaves too much room for interpretation.

“I’ve read this thing 150 times,” she said. “Every day, I’ll have a member call me and they’ll be like, ‘Well, what about this? How would it apply in this way?’ And I’m unable to answer it. It’s just not tight language.”

Nearly 70% of Alaskans voted to raise the minimum wage a decade ago but unlike that measure, this one includes sick leave.

If it passes, it would allow employees to use sick leave to care for a family member, but Capozzi said the definition of family member is one example of what she believes is overly broad language. It includes immediate family members, legal guardians, and any other individual whose “close association is the equivalent of a family relationship.”

“Is that neighbor Bob? Is it my dog?” Capozzi questioned.

Alaska has the lowest minimum wage of West Coast states by almost $2, according to the Department of Labor. Capozzi said 92% of Alaskans already make more than $15.

Alaska is one of seven states that require employers to pay tipped employees the full minimum wage, and Capozzi said that wasn’t taken into consideration when writing the measure. She said many tipped workers make significantly more than their hourly wage.

She said the measure would raise operational costs for business owners and would force businesses to charge more, cut positions, or even close.

James Strong owns Sweet Caribou, an eatery in Anchorage. If the measure passes, he said he’ll have to raise prices and cut part-time positions. He estimates the measure would cost him up to $12,000 each month in operating costs.

“What I have to do is I’ll have to do combined full time jobs. So [who it] really impacts [are] college kids that [are] looking to work four or five hours a day,” he said.

Most of Strong’s employees start at minimum wage and make tips, but some staff earn higher wages and don’t earn tips.

The measure allows employees to use paid sick leave for three days before an employer can require “reasonable documentation,” which the measure exemplifies as a signed document from a healthcare professional indicating that paid sick leave is or was necessary.

Strong worries it will make employees less reliable.

“People are gonna find more reasons to call in sick,” said Stong. “You’re going to have people that are going to be less reliable.”

Employers aren’t required to provide additional sick leave if they already have a paid time off policy that’s sufficient for hourly requirements.

But up in Fairbanks, Carey Fristoe, the co-owner of Black Spruce Brewing Company, sees it differently.

Fristoe thinks the measure could give hospitality businesses, like his, a competitive hiring advantage. The brewery opened six years ago, and he said most of his seven employees have worked there for several years.

His employees all make more than $15, except a single front-of-house employee who makes minimum wage plus tips. He thinks paying a higher wage would save him the time and cost of training new employees.

“Having people on board that are trained up, [and] in there for the long haul makes such a huge difference for us,” Fristoe said.

Fristoe also said employees shouldn’t have to worry about their paycheck when sick. His business is centered on food and beverage, and he said allowing employees to take time off when they’re sick keeps their customers, and other employees healthy.