A day after the votes for keeping Alaska’s open primary and ranked choice voting system overtook those to repeal it, the vote count tightened on Tuesday.
The votes against the ballot measure to repeal the system are only 45 votes ahead of those in favor of repeal, after having a 192-vote lead on Monday. Until then, the votes to pass the measure had been ahead in the counting that began on Election Day.
The 45-vote margin is equal to just over 1/100th of 1 percentage point of the 315,633 votes counted on the ballot measure, which opens up the possibility of a recount after the results are certified, which is scheduled for Nov. 30.
Tuesday’s update added 1,577 votes to the Ballot Measure 2 count. All ballots were cast on or before Election Day, and the Alaska Division of Elections has been counting them ever since.
The division said in a social media post that there were 5,800 ballots left to be counted on Wednesday, when the division is due to sort through the ranked choice voting for the races in which no candidate has more than 50% of the first preference votes.
In the other prominent statewide race, for Alaska’s sole U.S. House of Representatives seat, Republican candidate Nick Begich saw his lead grow over Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola. Begich has 157,331 votes to Peltola’s 149,763.
Begich’s 7,568-vote lead is 345 votes more than Monday’s count. While the race appears to be headed to ranked choice voting, Begich is positioned to expand his lead through the process. That’s because the third-highest vote getter, John Wayne Howe of the Alaskan Independence Party, ran to Begich’s right.
Under ranked choice voting, the votes of lower ranking candidates are redistributed to leading contenders based on the voters’ secondary choices. Howe’s voters are likely to have favored Begich in their secondary choices.
There were no other changes in the leaders in any of the 50 state legislative elections, and no change in the closest race, between Anchorage Democratic Rep. Cliff Groh and Republican former Rep. David Nelson, which Groh leads by 25 votes.
Other races to watch as the vote count wraps up and ranked choices are sorted on Wednesday:
In House District 28, which includes the heart of Wasilla, three Republican candidates will go through ranked choice tabulation. The current leader is Elexie Moore, with 2,907 first-preference votes, followed by Steve Menard, with 2,774, and Jessica Wright, with 1,995.In House District 38, which includes Bethel and most of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Democratic candidate Nellie “Unangik” Jimmie has 1,302 votes, followed by Democratic Rep. CJ McCormick, with 1,142; Veterans Party of Alaska candidate Willie Keppel, with 906; and Democrat Victoria Sosa, with 174.In House District 40, which includes the North Slope and Northwest Arctic Boroughs, Democrat Robyn “Niayuq” Burke has 1,305 votes, followed by Democrat Saima “Ikrik” Chase, with 809, and undeclared Rep. Thomas Baker, a former Republican, with 680.
In all other races, the leading candidates are positioned to gain votes in the ranked choice tabulation.
• Andrew Kitchenman has covered state government in Alaska since 2016, serving as the Capitol reporter for Alaska Public Media and KTOO before joining the Alaska Beacon. Before this, he covered state and local governments on the East Coast – primarily in New Jersey – for more than 15 years. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
