Early voting opened Monday for Alaska’s Aug. 20 primary election, but ballots headed to many rural Alaska polling locations failed to arrive in time due to delays in the mail, the director of the Alaska Division of Elections said Wednesday.
That’s left some rural voters waiting to cast their ballots, and the delay has caused some Democrats to cry foul.
Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, the official in charge of the elections division, is running as a Republican candidate in the U.S. House race, seeking to defeat Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola.
Peltola is Alaska Native, and in her 2022 campaigns for office, she earned a significant amount of support from the state’s rural Native villages.
Robyn Burke is a Democratic candidate for the Alaska state House and tried to vote on Tuesday in Utqiagvik because she’ll be traveling on the primary election day.
She went to an early voting site, “and they handed me an absentee ballot application. Like to request a mail-in ballot. And I said, ‘Do you not have absentee ballots?’”
As it turned out, they did not — and neither did over a dozen other rural towns.
Burke posted about the issue on social media, which drew further comments from voters who had been likewise affected.
Alaska has only a handful of true early voting sites that are set up like Election Day polling places. In smaller communities, the state distributes blank absentee ballots and allows voters to cast “absentee in person” votes that are then mailed through the normal absentee ballot process.
In places where mail delivery is often slow, it’s frequently a faster way to vote before Election Day.
But this year, some absentee ballot packages were delayed getting to their final destination. In Bethel, ballots didn’t arrive until Tuesday afternoon. In Utqiagvik and Kotzebue, they arrived Wednesday.
Altogether, eight communities didn’t receive their packages until Monday, nine got them on Tuesday, and as of Wednesday afternoon, 14 communities were still waiting for their ballots, said Carol Beecher, the division director.
That figure changed throughout the day as more information arrived.
In some cases, the delays were due to bad weather. In others, the person designated to pick up the mail from the airport wasn’t answering the phone.
Among the affected towns and villages were Atka, Nikolski and Akutan in the Aleutians, Sand Point on the Alaska Peninsula, and Shaktoolik and Koyuk on the western coast.
Burke, who’s previously voiced concern about voting access in rural Alaska, said she’s concerned by the delays.
“A large part of Mary Peltola’s voting base is Alaska Native, but we don’t have the ability to vote, or the timeline that we have to vote is shortened. With people being turned away, who knows if they’ll go back?” she said.
Lindsay Kavanaugh, director of the Alaska Democratic Party, said she also saw Burke’s comments and that the issue is Dahlstrom’s responsibility.
“If she is unable to put in the work to ensure eligible voters are able to cast a ballot no matter where they reside in the state, one can easily conclude she will not be an effective advocate in Congress, especially not for rural Alaskans,” Kavanaugh said.
Dahlstrom’s campaign declined to comment on the issue. Beecher, a Dahlstrom appointee, said by email that nothing untoward is happening.
“I can assure you that this had nothing to do with anything political. The (lieutenant governor) has delegated all election responsibilities and is not involved in the operations of the division. The delays are due to mailing issues, and some of the challenges we encounter with these remote locations,” she said.
• James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. 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.
