Delays in the reporting of Nov. 5 election results from Atqasuk followed efforts by poll workers to call in results to state elections officials several times, but they couldn’t get through, the city mayor said.
In Alaska, precincts that don’t use a scanner to report election results are instructed to call in their results after they tally the votes on election night, before mailing ballots to the Alaska Division of Elections. Results from Atqasuk hadn’t been recorded by the state for more than a week after the election, making it the last precinct to officially report results.
Atqasuk City Mayor Doug Whiteman had previously said that two poll workers missed the written instruction from the state to call in results before they mailed ballots. Then last week, Whiteman said that on election night, poll workers actually attempted 33 calls to the Division of Elections. He said they tried calling until 10:50 p.m. and left a voicemail to report the results.
“There was no skipped effort by election workers,” Whiteman said. “We believe the system was swamped.”
Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said it is possible that precincts needed to call in their results multiple times.
“We are not aware of Atqasuk poll workers attempting to call in multiple times on election night, but it is certainly possible,” Beecher said. “All hand-count precincts call in their results on election night and the circuits can be busy, especially right after 8 p.m., so they may have to call again later that evening.”
Beecher added that some of the phone lines were available until 3 a.m. on election night, and poll workers could also call in the results the next day.
“When Atqasuk was contacted the day after the elections, we were informed that they had already put everything in the mail, and thus could not provide the hand-count results,” Beecher said.
The Atqasuk poll workers did not have a fax machine or scanner to send in the results, which could be helpful as a backup in the future, Whiteman said.
Beecher said locations that are designated as hand-count precincts do not use scanners because of the lack of available bandwidth to send the results.
After Atqasuk poll workers brought ballots to the post office on Nov. 5, Whiteman said that planes could not get into the village for several days because of the winter storm. The election materials were mailed from Atqasuk on Nov. 8 and the results from Atqasuk were posted on the Division of Elections’ website on Nov. 14.
“Once the materials were received, the division was able to scan the ballots and post their results,” Beecher said.