Alaska Election Day updates: Polls now closed across the state

Many Alaskans headed to the polls Tuesday to vote for president, U.S. House and state legislative candidates, and they’ll also decide two ballot measures. Check back for fresh updates through the evening as returns come in.

Polls now closed

Update, 8 p.m.: Polls in Alaska are closed. Returns will be posted by the Alaska Division of Elections later in the evening.

Candidates in tight U.S. House race await results in Anchorage

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola and her Republican challenger Nick Begich III were both planning events in Anchorage Tuesday. Peltola was due to appear at a party hosted by her campaign at 49th State Brewing downtown. Begich’s party was a few blocks away at the Marriott hotel.

Both candidates had spent the day before the election in Anchorage, where they cast their ballots. Begich said he did not wait long at the early voting location in Eagle River. Peltola got a two-hour line at the Anchorage City Hall voting location late Monday morning. Begich and Peltola also spent some of the final hours ahead of polls closing waiving signs at busy Anchorage intersections.

Otherwise, the Election Day agenda for Peltola included “pacing,” she said Tuesday morning.

Alaska’s lone congressional race is seen as one of the most competitive in the nation in what is expected to again be a closely divided House. The election drew tens of millions of dollars in ad spending and weeks of attacks on both Peltola and Begich.

Begich said Monday he was “feeling cautiously optimistic.”

Peltola said she has “a lot more gratitude” this year compared to 2022, when she first won the seat. She said her campaign was aided by an army of volunteers who knocked on doors and made phone calls on her behalf.

“We’re not building the plane as we’re flying it,” she said.

Polls open everywhere except two Western Alaska villages

Polls opened across the state at 7 a.m. Tuesday, but not in two Western Alaska villages, according to the Division of Elections.

Voting at St. George, where 31 registered voters reside, did not begin until 2 p.m. due to a windstorm, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said Tuesday.

The polling location also did not open as planned in Wales, where 63 registered voters live. Beecher said a team of election workers was ready to dispatch to the community but was “waiting for the weather allow travel.”

The Wales precinct opened at a 4 p.m., at which point all polling locations across the state were operating as planned.

Wales, a village in Western Alaska, also did not open for voting for August’s primary. The Division of Elections said at the time that they had tried to find replacement poll workers to open the precinct, but none were available.

Beecher said Monday that the Division of Elections had planned to send poll workers to Egegik, a village in Southwest Alaska, so the polling place could open as planned Tuesday for the village’s 96 registered voters.

Meanwhile, downed power lines in South Anchorage left 3,100 people without power. The outage impacted some voters at Tudor Elementary School who briefly cast ballots using flashlights until power was restored.

[Election Day in Alaska: How to vote, what’s on the ballot, when to expect results]

Polling locations will be open across the state until 8 p.m. Alaskans can find their polling location online. In Anchorage, voters can also cast their ballots at the Ted Stevens International Airport and at the Division of Elections offices in Midtown, regardless of their voting precinct.

The Division of Elections’ website was temporarily offline Tuesday morning due to a high volume of web traffic. The website was back online shortly before 10 a.m.

Ballot counting

Once polls close, election workers are expected to begin counting ballots cast in person Tuesday, along with some early votes cast and by-mail ballots that arrived at Alaska Division of Elections offices through the end of October.

That leaves thousands of early and absentee ballots that won’t be counted until a week after Election Day, meaning some close races could remain with no clear winner until later this month.

The Division of Elections expects to count just over 31,000 by-mail ballots on Tuesday night, but only 155 of them came from rural districts of the state, including the North Slope and Southwest, Western and Northwest Alaska.

[Photos: Election Day in Anchorage]

The Division of Elections reported that around 79,000 absentee ballot had been issued to voters, and that nearly 49,000 of them were returned as of Sunday. Absentee ballots arriving from overseas can be counted as long as they arrive at the Division of Elections within 15 days of Election Day.

In addition, nearly 62,000 Alaskans cast ballots before Tuesday at one of a dozen early voting locations.