EDITORIAL: How Alaska can fix its sluggish ballot-counting problem

When it comes to election results, Alaska’s vote-counting pace tends to resemble its mountain valleys: glacial. While almost all other states count nearly all of their ballots in the hours after polls close on election night, Alaskans are left waiting for two weeks while results trickle in, updated at uneven times by the Division of Elections. Our state has its challenges of geography and diverse communities, but there’s no reason we can’t do better in administering our elections and getting results reported more promptly. Alaska can make three changes that would speed up reporting and minimize disenfranchisement, and it ought to implement them as soon as possible.

1. Stop committing unforced errors

The state Division of Elections’ work has been marred in recent years by embarrassing missteps that have stained its credibility and led to unacceptable disenfranchisement of Alaska voters. Persistent issues with providing appropriate translations and assistance to Native-language voters have led to the federal Department of Justice monitoring Alaska’s elections for compliance with the Voting Rights Act. In this year’s primary, as well as in 2022, polling places in some rural communities failed to open, leaving residents unable to cast their ballots. This year, some early voters in Southwest Alaska were sent the wrong ballots, and the voting supervisor for much of rural Alaska was quietly replaced the day before the November election. And a superfluous, unverifiable witness-signature requirement resulted in thousands of ballots being rejected in 2022, a problem which is likely to return this year after lawmakers failed to ax the requirement — a failure that may have been intentional.

All of these issues add up to a lack of faith by Alaskans in how our elections are administered — and that’s before you even get to the state’s tendency for slow ballot counts. The delay in counting causes its own credibility issues, with conspiracy-minded residents floating baseless theories that ballots are being added, subtracted or altered in order to secure a desired result.

2. Get ballots counted earlier

One big factor in why Alaska takes so long to count ballots is the state’s unusually permissive requirements about when absentee ballots can be cast and received. Alaska’s requirements are the least restrictive in the nation, allowing ballots to be counted so long as they are postmarked by Election Day and received within 10 days post-election. In recent years, high numbers of absentee ballots have led to uncertainty over the results, in some cases stretching as long as two weeks post-election. It doesn’t help that the timing of counts in the days after the election is poorly publicized and uneven.

Given that the bottom-line reason why results can’t be finalized sooner is structural, the only real option for Alaska to ensure ballots can be counted sooner is the one many states have already adopted. Instead of allowing absentee ballots to arrive up to 10 days after Election Day, make the deadline Election Day itself. Will this require strong effort from the Division of Elections to publicize the new timeline? Yes. But it’s worth it to have ballots in hand once the polls close, making it possible to count the vast majority of votes right away and finish the count within a few days. Once voters get used to the new deadline, the potential for disenfranchisement will be minimal, as other states can attest. As it stands, the Division of Elections doesn’t start counting absentee ballots until after the polls close on Election Night; the division should be open to counting absentee ballots as they arrive to speed up the process. Perplexingly, elections staff don’t even begin to tally questioned ballots until a week post-election; there is no reason these ballots couldn’t be totaled on Election Night as well. If there are legal challenges to questioned ballots, those will arise regardless of when ballot-counting takes place, so why not get that process started sooner?

3. Allow more voters to register and vote

Although Alaska’s rules for absentee ballots are more permissive than any other state, our deadline for registration to vote in an election is one of the most restrictive — voters who aren’t registered 30 days prior to the election are unable to vote for any office other than U.S. president. In order to ensure as many Alaska voters as possible can make their voices heard, the state should allow for voter registration (with proper documentation and proof of residence) up to and on Election Day itself. This expansion of the franchise would go far to ensure that every Alaskan who wants to participate in our democratic institutions can do so. And given that many states far more populous than Alaska allow same-day registration, it’s clearly not too big of a logistical lift for elections personnel to handle, even amidst a bustling voting day.

Alaska’s election timetable was acceptable before absentee ballots became a more popular option and so many races were left hanging in the balance for more than a week post-election. But in 2024, voters expect a quicker count and more certainty about the result, and that’s something our Division of Elections should be able to manage. It’s embarrassing to have the whole world looking at Alaska’s U.S. House race and wondering why we can’t count faster. By implementing these fixes, the state can restore confidence in its ability to administer elections and get results reported more quickly.