Joe Biden is the winner of the Alaska Democratic Party’s first-ever balloted primary, a mail-in process that replaced traditional caucuses.

A total of 19,759 ballots were mailed back by Democrats statewide, for a 28 percent turnout after the party allowed people to cast ballots for an additional week longer than originally planned.

The party said it mailed 71,000 ballots, and they were due in the party headquarters by April 10.

Joe Biden won 55.3% of the vote, with 10,834 votes. He will be awarded nine delegates.
Bernie Sanders won 44.7%, with 8,755 votes, and will be awarded 8 delegates.

Biden, although he won by over 2,000 votes, only netted one delegate more than Sanders for the Democrats’ National Convention.

The Democrats experimented with ranked choice voting, allowing people to rank their top five candidates in the order of preference. The party has not announced who received the third, fourth, and fifth most votes.

Ranked choice voting allows people who pick losing candidates to have their ballots recounted for their next favorite pick, allowing those voters to have their ballots counted twice or more. Alaskans for Better Elections is attempting to have Alaska’s official elections adopt this plan, which was executed during the private party-run process this past month.

Candidates who suspended their campaigns but requested that their votes still be tabulated were reflected in the results, the party said, while candidates who have asked that their votes not be tabulated were not reflected in the results.

Sanders suspended his campaign April 8, but said would still seek delegates to go to the convention.

Democrats will have virtual district caucuses held on April 18 by each of Alaska’s 40 House Districts to choose delegates to go to the statewide convention.

The Alaska Democratic Party’s statewide convention, originally scheduled to be held in Fairbanks on May 15-16, will be conducted online, just as the Republicans held theirs online earlier this month due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

During the 2016 Alaska Democratic Caucuses, Bernie Sanders won 81.6% of the votes by participants, to Hillary Clinton’s 18.4%.

START BY DELAYING THE ONE-HALIBUT REGULATIONS

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce is looking toward summer and an eventual end to the shutdown of the coronavirus economy.

Pierce sent a letter to Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, Congressman Don Young and Gov. Mike Dunleavy last week, requesting they ask the International Halibut Commission to restore the Southcentral 2020-2021 halibut sport fishing regulations to two halibut per person, per day, and seven days a week fishing allowed for charters, with multiple trips allowed per day.

Sports fishers used to be able to catch two halibut a day in the central Gulf of Alaska. Charter operators would take two groups of six a day — one in the morning, and one in the evening, for a total of 12 customers a day.

But in February, the International Halibut Commission cut the harvests in all areas in the Pacific Northwest to try to build up a dwindling fishery.

Area 3A (Central Gulf of Alaska) was set at one halibut per day for the coming season.

It’s not going to be enough to jumpstart the economy on the Kenai to just allow one halibut a day, Pierce said.

“The restoration of our economy following the COVID-19 pandemic is critical and affects all Alaskans,” Pierce wrote, reminding lawmakers that the halibut charters bring people to the stores, restaurants, hotels, and other businesses all over the peninsula and that tourism is one of the primary industries of the borough’s economy.

“All I’m asking them to do is, in light of the crisis we’re faced with, reconsider the rules, and delay them until 2021 or 2022,” he said.