What to know about Alaska’s primary election that ends Tuesday

Voting in Alaska’s 2024 primary election will end Tuesday at 8 p.m.

Alaskans will vote in “the pick-one primary” for the state’s sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. All 40 state House seats will be on Tuesday’s ballot, alongside half of the state Senate’s 20 seats.

Polling places will open on primary election day at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.

The Alaska Division of Elections maintains a list of polling locations on its website, which is also searchable by ZIP code.

First results on primary election night are due around 9 p.m. Results will continue to be released throughout the night, state elections officials said.

The Division of Elections is planning to certify primary election results by Sept. 1. The deadline for candidates to withdraw from the general election is Sept. 2.

In 2020, Alaska voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative that implemented ranked choice voting and open primaries. Voters will pick one candidate in each race on the primary election ballot. The top four vote-getters in each race, regardless of political affiliation, will advance to the general election on Nov. 5, which will be decided by ranked choice voting.

By-mail absentee ballots must be postmarked on or before primary election day to be counted. By-mail ballots will be counted if they arrive at the Division of Elections within 10 days of election day.

Election workers reported confusion from some Anchorage voters who expected to automatically receive an absentee ballot in the mail, as is required for the city’s municipal elections. That is not the case for state-run elections; only voters who requested an absentee ballot received one by mail.

Voters must include an identifier — such as their driver’s license number or birth date — on their by-mail ballot envelope. They must sign the absentee ballot envelope themselves, and have a witness who also signs the envelope.

In 2022, almost 7,500 absentee ballots were rejected from the state’s first all-mail special congressional election — two-thirds of those ballots were rejected because of mistakes made on the ballot envelope.

[Most of Alaska’s candidates are already thinking about November. Here’s why Tuesday’s primary election still matters.]

Officials from the U.S. Department of Justice will be monitoring compliance with federal voting rights laws in locations across Western Alaska on primary election day. Federal officials will monitor whether election assistance is adequately provided in Yup’ik dialects, a statement from the department said.

Two years ago, federal officials flagged issues at several rural polling locations, including for a lack of bilingual election workers.

By-mail voting ahead of Tuesday’s primary was down compared to the 2020 and 2022 primary elections, which were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. By Sunday, just over 20,000 Alaskans had already voted in person or by-mail for the Aug. 20 primary, according to Division of Elections.

Early voting for the primary election started on Aug. 5.

Lauri Wilson, the Region 1 elections supervisor, said Monday that turnout had been “pretty slow” for early voting in Juneau. But in-person voting had picked up by Monday in the Mendenhall Valley, she added.

In Anchorage, a steady stream of early voters cast their ballots throughout the weekend and on Monday, according to election workers at the Region 2 office.

Twelve candidates are running for Alaska’s sole seat in the U.S. House. Incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola is running against Republican frontrunners Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and businessman Nick Begich III.

The primary election will winnow the list of Alaska congressional candidates from 12 to four. Begich has pledged to drop out if he is not the top-placed Republican candidate after the primary. Dahlstrom has not made a similar pledge.

The race for Congress is one of a few swing districts across the U.S., and it has been watched closely nationally. Alaska’s U.S. House seat is one of five held by a Democrat that voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Forty-eight races for the Alaska Legislature have four or fewer candidates on the ballot, meaning every candidate in those races can advance to the general election. Candidates and political consultants say positioning in those races can still be critical for fundraising and building momentum to November.

Two races for the Alaska Legislature have more than four candidates: A five-way state Senate race in Eagle River and a six-way race for a vacant Fairbanks House seat — the largest state House district in the nation. One Eagle River candidate is set to be eliminated in the primary; two are set to be eliminated for the Fairbanks House seat that encompasses Tok, Delta Junction and Fort Yukon.

Primary election voters will not see ballot initiatives on Tuesday’s ballot. One ballot measure to repeal ranked choice voting, and another to boost the state’s minimum wage, are set to appear on November’s general election ballot. Nineteen state judges up for retention elections will be on the general election ballot, too.

“This ballot in the primary is very simple and the voting experience should be very fast,” said Jeff Congdon, Region 2 supervisor for the Division of Elections. “In the general election in November, the ballot has a lot more complexity to it.”

Alaska’s primaries for presidential candidates are run separately by political parties. An overwhelming majority of Republicans voted for former President Donald Trump in their March presidential preference poll. Alaska Democrats have swung behind Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out last month.

Peltola is one of a handful of Democratic members of Congress who have chosen not to attend the Democratic National Convention this week in Chicago. She was set to cast her ballot in Anchorage on Monday evening, and appear at an event in Kenai on Wednesday, the day before Harris is set to formally accept the Democratic nomination for president. Peltola is Alaska’s highest-profile Democrat who has declined to endorse Harris.

Visit adn.com on election night for up-to-date news.