Over a week after the Nov. 5 election, the North Slope village of Atqasuk has not reported the election results — the only precinct in Alaska that hasn’t done so by Wednesday. City officials said that local poll workers mailed the ballots but missed the directions to call in the results first.
Precincts that don’t use a scanner are instructed to call in their results after they tally the votes on election night, the Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said in an email.
Atqasuk City Mayor Douglas Whiteman said that the two local poll workers missed the written instruction to call in the results and just mailed the votes from the village of around 275.
“It was a big mountain of paperwork,” he said. “They did hard work and skipped something.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Whiteman was working to sort the situation himself.
“I’m puzzled. What was wrong? ... I was calling to find out what was going on,” he said. “How do we fix this?”
Whiteman said the confusion was partially caused by having different procedures for local, borough, state and federal elections. He also said there is a lack of training for the poll workers on election procedures and a need for clearer communication with the Division of Elections.
“Communication’s a little bit fuzzy,” Whiteman said. ”Maybe it could be getting them to have a broader checklist, you know — steps all the way through. Because it is a long, long day, from seven in the morning, eight at night.”
Whitman suggested the direction to call in the preliminary votes needed to be highlighted for the poll workers.
Atqasuk poll workers — who worked during the October election as well —brought ballots to the post office on Nov. 5, Whiteman said. Bad weather prevented planes from getting into the village for several days after that, he said.
The USPS confirmed that the election materials were mailed from Atqasuk on Nov. 8, Beecher said. As of Wednesday, the ballots hadn’t arrived at the Division of Elections for the results to be posted.