Don’t expect quick results from Election Day, Alaska Lt. Gov. Meyer says

Six days before Election Day, Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer and Gail Fenumiai, head of the Alaska Division of Elections, answered more than an hour of questions from reporters across the state. Here are five takeaways from that discussion:

Results will be slow, even in races that don’t use ranked choice voting.

Through Wednesday night, almost 48,000 Alaskans had already cast early or absentee votes, according to figures published by the Division of Elections. Many of those votes, plus others that come in before Election Day, won’t be counted until after polls close.

Meyer said Alaskans should be prepared.

“I know that in 2020, a lot of people were suspicious. On election night, boy, they were ahead, they were feeling good, and then when all the absentees came in, the votes changed, and I just want to alert people that that’s going to happen again this year,” he said.

The number of mailed absentee ballots this year isn’t expected to match 2020, when more than 110,000 were cast that way, but it is expected to be high.

If someone votes in person on or before Nov. 3 at one of a handful early voting stations, their vote will be included in the Election Day total. Early votes after that date will be added later.

Many absentee ballots — including absentee ballots cast at an in-person polling place — will not be included in the Election Day total either. Those could show up as late as 15 days after Election Day, the deadline for absentee ballots to arrive from overseas.

This year’s elections also use ranked choice voting. If a race has only two candidates, the ranking process isn’t needed. But if a race has three or more candidates and none receive more than half of the total votes, the ranking and sorting will take place at 4 p.m. Nov. 23, after the deadline for the last ballots.

Fenumiai has previously said that the division deliberately scheduled the sort until after all ballots have been received. Some cities in the Lower 48 sort multiple times, releasing incremental results as ballots arrive and are counted.

That sorting will be televised by KTOO public television and streamed online by the station. In the primary election, the sorting was broadcast online by the division, with mixed results.

Finding poll workers in parts of rural Alaska is still a problem.

The Division of Elections has perennially struggled to staff polling stations in rural Alaska, and Fenumiai said this year is no different. As of Wednesday, she said the division was still looking for workers in St. Mary’s and Goodnews Bay, two towns in Southwest Alaska.

In a new approach, the Division of Elections has been working with Get Out The Native Vote, a nonpartisan, multi-tribal campaign, to recruit workers.

Michelle Sparck, the group’s director of strategic initiatives, said the division is clearly well-intentioned, but it is difficult to find people who can be available to undergo training and work the polls in a small town.

“I think they really do earnest work. They put in a lot of legwork throughout the year. It’s exhausting to create these relationships,” she said.

She said that she has also reached out to tribal leaders and organizations to lend staff, if needed.

In rural precincts, ballots are hand-counted, then sent to elections officials through the mail. In August, ballot packages from six towns didn’t arrive until after the results were certified, effectively dropping those votes from the total.

To avoid a recurrence, Fenumiai said ballots will be mailed via express mail, and Sparck said she distributed flyers through the Alaska Air Carriers Association, telling the operators of small mail planes to watch out for those packages and prioritize them.

There have been threats against poll workers elsewhere, but not here.

In the Lower 48, some elections officials have reported violent threats and harassment from supporters of former President Donald Trump. Meyer and Fenumiai said they haven’t heard of any such threats here.

“I am glad here in Alaska that they haven’t been taking too much grief,” Meyer said.

Polling indicates that Republican and Republican-leaning voters are opposed to the state’s new ranked choice election system. Meyer noted that voters picked the system, not poll workers and politicians.

Speaking generally, he said that if someone is angry about any election laws, they shouldn’t be upset with poll workers.

“Don’t blame the election workers,” he said. “Blame me, the governor or the legislators for whatever the law is that we have in statute.”

Machine-counted vote tallies continue to be accurate.

In 2020, a hand count of the results for Ballot Measure 2, the ranked choice election system, came up only 24 votes different from a machine-tabulated result that considered all 361,400 votes cast that year.

“We found no significant differences between the hand count of the ballots versus the Dominion tabulators,” Meyer said, referring to machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems and used by the state.

Hand counts undertaken after the Aug. 16 primary election found similarly few errors, Fenumiai said. She wasn’t able to immediately provide statistics but said that all of the counts were less than the error needed to force a broader recount.

State law requires the ballots from at least one randomly selected precinct in each of the state’s 40 House districts to be checked by hand. If the hand count is more than 1% off from the machine count, the entire district is counted by hand.

“I’m satisfied that our process works,” Meyer said. “There’s enough checks and balances in place that if something isn’t quite right, we’ll catch it soon.”

Mailed ballots are arriving, even with one stamp.

Earlier this election season, some voters became alarmed by the weight of this year’s absentee ballot, which is hefty enough to require two first-class stamps. Election officials and the U.S. Postal Service quickly clarified that ballots will still be delivered, even if they have only one stamp.

“I have received no reports from any of the regional offices that there have been any issues,” Fenumiai said, “and we’ve received no reports from any voters at this point who say their ballot was returned because of insufficient postage.”