The Division of Elections counted another 17,000 ballots on Friday, and while overall results did not change, there are three races to watch today, as more ballots get counted:
Congressional race: The lead Nick Begich has over Rep. Mary Peltola has shrunk slightly to 9,175. Begich has gone from 49.66% of the vote to 48.88%. There have been 312,070 votes counted in this race. Begich has 152,545 and Peltola has 143,370.
Ballot Measure 2: The repeal of the ranked-choice voting scheme now in place in Alaska tightened to a 1,676-vote advantage for the repeal. There have been 304,154 votes counted in this race. Yes to repeal is 152,915, while No is at 151,239. 50.28 to 49.72, less than a .56% difference.
This is nearly a mirror image of the ballot measure in 2020 that installed ranked-choice voting. That year, voters approved the scheme by 50.55% of the vote, while this year, the repeal of ranked-choice is winning by that margin.
District 18 Alaska House: The lead that Democrat Cliff Groh has over Republican challenger David Nelson has shrunk to 10 votes. There have been 3,419 votes counted. Groh has 1,713 and Nelson has 1,703; there were three write-in votes.
Other races: In this recent count, the curtain has come down on Rep. David Eastman, with Jubilee Underwood, who has 50.64% of the vote to 48.05%. There are not enough ballots outstanding in District 27 to change the results.
More ballots will be counted today — as many as 6,000. A minuscule number of military overseas ballots will come until Nov. 20, when the division will run its final calculations plus the ranking process. Districts 28, 36, 38, and 40, as well as District 6 and Senate Districts D, F, and L will have to be decided by the ranked-choice algorithm.
So those senate and house districts that are to be decide by the Ranked-Not a Choice algorithm will be decided by those who actually have the impacts of TWO votes! Whatever happened to “one person, one vote”?