Election Day updates: Polling locations fail to open in 2 rural Alaska communities

Many Alaskans are heading to the polls Tuesday to vote for president, U.S. House and state legislative candidates, and they’ll also decide two ballot measures. Election Day polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Check back for fresh updates through the day.

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, would 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. It was not immediately clear when Wales voters would be able to cast their ballots.

“We have a team to work at Wales, but they are waiting for the weather to allow travel,” Beecher said in a brief email.

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.