Update: Alaska Oil and Gas Association has changed the timeframe for the congressional candidate forum to end at 3:45 pm on Wednesday in order to avoid the awkward timeframe for candidates.
A candidate forum for Alaska’s congressional election is one of the highlights of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association’s conference on Wednesday, Aug. 31. From 3-4:30 pm three candidates on the General Election ballot will answer questions before the energy industry leaders at the Dena’ina Center, at a conference that is an annual event.
But during that conference, the Division of Elections has announced it will be tabulating the ballot choices for the final winner in the special election to temporarily replace Congressman Don Young, who died March 18.
The process of counting the second Begich votes should not take long once the computer is set to calculate the second round of voter choices.
That means that Mary Peltola, the Democrat, and Sarah Palin, the Republican, will find out if the voters for Republican Nick Begich have made one of them a winner of the ranked choice voting. With the chippy relationship between Palin and Begich, it’s possible that some of his voters may have declined to rank Palin second. They may have ranked no one second, or may have even ranked Peltola, or a random write-in like Donald Duck.
But whomever they ranked should be known within minutes after the Division of Election begins the process at 4 pm on Thursday. And that makes it likely that Peltola and Palin, along with Begich, will be on stage with a microphone in front of them when the announcement is made.
The voters’ decisions in the special general election determined the temporary seat; that person will be sworn in within days and will serve until the end of the regular general election and swearing in of the new class of congressmen in January. The regular election has four people proceeding to the general election ballot in November, including Begich, Libertarian Chris Bye, Sarah Palin, and Mary Peltola.
