The Alaska Division of Elections on Wednesday was able to report 15 of the 28 rural precincts that had not phoned in their results from the Nov. 5 elections. But there are still 13 precincts that had not reported their results by Nov. 6, and the Division has provided no explanation to the public.
“Good afternoon, we are posting results today that will include 15 more precincts that did not initially report on election night. We continue to try and contact our workers to get results prior to shipping materials back to the division,” the Division reported on Wednesday afternoon.
The results that did come in gave Rep. Mary Peltola about 550 more votes, but she needs about 11,000 votes to close the gap and achieve the 50%+1 that is needed to win reelection. Nick Begich, her opponent, only needs about 1,186 votes to reach the winning number to unseat Peltola.
It’s unclear when the Division will count more of the ballots they have in hand or even how many ballots they have that were not counted on Nov. 5 or 6. Those would include early votes cast from last Thursday through Monday, Nov, 4. About 3,700 ballots remain to be counted for the Senate Seat P (Fairbanks) seat, now being won by Sen. Scott Kawasaki. They include about 2,000 questioned ballots, 1,000 early votes, and 700 absentee ballots by mail.
Communication from the Division about the process has been subpar. There may be more ballots counted Thursday, Nov. 7, but there appears to be no guarantee.
The Division has decided to not release the raw data on any of the ballots that would give those candidates in ranked-choice races the opportunity to do they own analysis about where their race stands. This information is public information but is being withheld from the public by the Division for unknown reasons. The Division also withheld that information in 2022, the first year that ranked-choice voting was operating in Alaska elections.