Anchorage voters wait hours to cast early ballots, mirroring national trend

On Sunday afternoon, the line of voters waiting to cast ballots at the Alaska Division of Elections office in Midtown Anchorage wrapped around the building and partway down the block. People waited two hours or more on a wintry day to cast ballots early, a scene that’s occurred on multiple days here recently and that mirrors trends across the country.

More Americans — and more Alaskans — are choosing to vote early this year than in previous elections.

“I don’t want to leave it to chance,” said Sonja Kent as she stood in line Sunday. If she’d known how long the wait would be, she said, she would have dressed warmer. “We’ve always voted on election day, but I think the extra snow that we’ve had and just wanting to make sure that we got the chance to vote brought us out earlier than Tuesday.”

By Sunday evening, more than 23,900 voters in the Anchorage area and over 61,900 people statewide have cast early ballots, said Jeff Congdon, the regional director who oversees the Anchorage office. The numbers did not include absentee ballots, he said. On Sunday alone, 672 people in Anchorage and 2,046 people across the state showed up to vote, he said. During the week, almost every day, the number of early voters in Anchorage was over a thousand, he said.

Alaska surpassed its 2020 record of early vote numbers on Saturday, Congdon said.

“This is different from previous years,” Congdon said. “Nationwide, we’re seeing a huge, huge early vote push.”

Nationwide, more than 74 million Americans had cast their ballots as of Saturday — almost 47% of the total number cast in the 2020 presidential election.

[As millions of Americans cast their ballots early, Election Day has morphed into Election Season.]

For Anchorage voters interviewed Sunday, demanding jobs and a sense of heightened urgency around the election were among the reasons driving them to polls early.

“We work during the week,” said Dawn Wroblewski. “Sunday is the only day we could” vote.

Another first-time early voter, Josephine Immamak, said, “I just wanted to get it out of my system. Watching the news so much, it’s giving me a migraine, just to see what’s going on. So (I wanted) to verify with my own self that, hey, I did my part, I can just leave it alone.”

Immamak later said she voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, whose policies she thinks can better protect women’s health.

Michael Sexton said he came to vote early because bad weather was in the forecast for the beginning of the week and because he felt it was important to make sure he exercised his civic duty.

“This year is a little different,” said Sexton, who said he was planning to vote for former President Donald Trump. “This is a unique situation, I think, for Alaska and everybody. ... The economy … that’s number one for me. ... I’m only one guy, and all I get to do is vote, so that’s my job.”

[Early voting is surging, but not in rural Alaska]

Some of the voters in line Sunday were entertained by a raven that pushed snow down from the roof onto the sidewalk.

“I got a big snowball on my shoulder,” said Will Elliott, who was waiting with his wife Sarah Sjostedt and their three-year-old daughter Lane.

The family decided to vote early because they had more time during the weekend and because they wanted to make it a family activity, Sjostedt said. Their daughter, dressed in a tutu under a bright orange jacket, was holding a coloring book, pencils and stickers to pass the time.

“It’s important for us to bring our daughter to see the election process,” Sjostedt said. “We figured we could do it as a family today.”

After voting, Kean and Stephanie Hall were in the parking lot, taking photos of each other with the “I voted” stickers. The couple usually votes on election day, but a busy work schedule prevented them from voting during the last election cycle. So this year, they waited in line for two-and-a-half hours.

“Work, life happens,” Keon Hall said. “I was very disappointed in the fact that I wasn’t doing my civic duty, so I was like, ‘Look, we got to be proactive’” this year.

Stephanie Hall, a teacher, said she and her husband, a general manager at Alaska Dinner Factory, have different political views but respect each other’s decisions and agree on the importance of voting.

“We are firm believers that if you don’t vote, then you don’t have a right to gripe or complain,” she said. “So this year we’re like, okay, no matter what we’re going through, we’re gonna vote. We’re gonna do it early.”

Early voting continues in several Anchorage locations on Monday. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.