Alaska elections officials finished their vote-counting Wednesday without any reversals in the handful of tight races for state legislative seats.
Incumbent Rep. Charisse Millett, R-Anchorage, picked up three more votes from the previous count and held a 79-vote lead over Pat Higgins, her Democratic challenger, in the closest of 50 legislative races after Wednesday's count.
[View unofficial results on the state Division of Elections website]
Millett said she was "humbled" to win re-election, adding that she thought the tight results in her race and others reflected Alaskans' "uneasiness" about the state's massive budget deficit — and the unpopularity of all the potential fixes, from taxes to budget cuts to restructuring the Permanent Fund and reducing dividends.
Millett's final winning margin amounted to just over 1 percent, with 3,612 votes to Higgins' 3,533. She'll be in the incoming House Republican minority after serving as the majority leader in the outgoing House majority, which will be replaced by a coalition largely made up of Democrats.
"There's just no popular solution. There's not a solution that people are coalescing around, and that was what the election was about," Millett said in a phone interview Wednesday. "There was no overwhelming, resounding, 'OK, I'm going to vote for this person because they had a plan.' "
Another incumbent Anchorage Republican, Rep. Lance Pruitt, remained ahead of Democratic challenger Harry Crawford by 144 votes, while independent Jason Grenn's final margin over incumbent Anchorage Republican Rep. Liz Vazquez was 199 votes.
In District 32, which includes Kodiak, Cordova, Seldovia and Yakutat, incumbent Republican Rep. Louise Stutes had a 185-vote cushion over Duncan Fields, the independent candidate who was trying to unseat her.
"We are done counting for the 2016 general election," Josie Bahnke, the state elections director, said in a statement.
The division aims to certify the election by the end of the month.