Last-minute poll closures due to coronavirus-related health concerns don’t seem to have inhibited anybody’s ability to vote Tuesday in the Organized Village of Kake, according to President Joel Jackson.
The Department of Elections announced the closure of six polling places in rural communities Monday night, less than 12 hours before voting was set to begin. But Kake’s decision was made because of local health concerns and not because of the Trump administration, who some have accused of deliberately cutting the United States Postal Service in an effort to undermine voting by mail.
“This decision has nothing to do with the president’s efforts to try to discourage voting,” Jackson told the Empire Wednesday in a phone interview. “We have six active cases. We are being cautious because we are a small community.”
Kake’s polling place was technically closed, he said, but anyone who wanted to vote simply had to call ahead and a poll worker would bring them a ballot in the parking lot of Kake City Hall.
DOE’s announcement said absentee voting ballots would still be accepted at all six locations.
Kake only has one clinic run by the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, Jackson said, and while the village has been able to get testing supplies and other medical equipment, there are concerns about maintaining those supplies.
Asked if the closure had frustrated anyone’s attempt at voting, Jackson said he hadn’t heard of any.
“No, not today,” he said. “I’m disappointed that the president is trying to block people’s right to vote by using the mail but we’re just being cautious.”
Changes at the Postal Service
Several recent changes to the United States Postal Service by the Trump administration have led to criticisms the president is trying to undermine people’s ability to vote by mail. The number of people voting by mail is expected to be higher than normal for this November due to health concerns, but Trump has questioned the security of vote-by-mail ballots, according to the Associated Press, despite using the service himself in his resident state of Florida.
Tuesday afternoon Trump’s new postmaster general Louis DeJoy announced several of the recent changes were being halted until after the election. DeJoy, a businessman and Republican donor, was appointed by the President in May and immediately made drastic cuts to USPS including the elimination of employee overtime and the removal of the postal service’s blue mailboxes placed on city streets.
The stop to the changes was made as more than 20 states, not including Alaska, announced they would be suing to stop the changes and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, announced over the weekend she was calling House Representatives back to Washington for a vote on a bill to support the post office. However, according to AP, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, is unlikely to resume session to hold a vote on a postal bill.
The Empire previously reported postal workers could no longer serve as witnesses for mail-in-ballots while on the job, something which the Alaska Division of Elections confirmed had been acceptable in the past.
In an email, USPS spokesperson Martha Johnson told the Empire postal workers, “are prohibited from serving as witnesses in their official capacity while on duty, due in part to the potential operational impacts. The Postal Service does not prohibit an employee from serving as a witness in their personal capacity off-duty, if they so choose.”
Trump denied he was trying to slow the postal service’s work and inhibit voting by mail, but criticized the practice while speaking with reporters.
“You can’t have millions and millions of ballots sent all over the place, sent to people that are dead, sent to dogs, cats, sent everywhere,” AP reported Trump saying. “This isn’t games and you have to get it right.”
• Contact reporter Peter Segall at psegall@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SegallJnoEmpire.
