The election is over, thankfully. No more campaign calls, tweets, texts or flyers in the mail. The polls closed around the state at 8 p.m. Tuesday, and now all that remains is to wait for the count.
Which will require patience.
That doesn’t mean anyone is stealing votes or changing ballots or messing with democracy and the will of the people. It just means that tens of thousands of Alaskans voted early, same as tens of millions of Americans. Some of those votes will be counted along with all the in-person ballots on Nov. 8, but many will not be tabulated until days after the election.
Officials need to verify the eligibility of early and absentee voters, to ensure that no one cast an early ballot and then also showed up at the polls on election day.
Officials need to wait for the last of mail-in ballots to arrive, which is allowed after the election in Alaska as long as the ballot was postmarked before the polls closed. The deadline to receive mail-in ballots is Nov. 23, which allows time for delivery from military members serving overseas and Alaskans living in remote communities.
And in Alaska, officials will need to run the tabulation after all votes are counted to determine the winners under the state’s new ranked-choice voting system. First, after all the ballots are in, election officials will determine if any candidate received more than 50% of the vote. If so, we have a winner. If not, the fourth and maybe also the third place finishers are dropped from the tally and their votes reassigned to those voters’ next choice until someone emerges with more than 50% of the votes.
Alaskans need to trust their election officials, including 30-year public officeholder Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer, who held a press conference last week to reassure voters that the system works — even if the candidate who is ahead on Nov. 8 does not end up being the winner.
“I know that in 2020, a lot of people were suspicious. On election night, boy, they were ahead, they were feeling good, and then when all the absentees came in, the votes changed, and I just want to alert people that that’s going to happen again this year,” Meyer said.
Alaska could count ballots every day until the Nov. 23 deadline, releasing a steady drip of vote tallies and daily leaders for two weeks, but that would not serve a purpose other than entertainment. What matters is who wins in the final count, and that determination cannot happen until all the ballots are tallied.
The best advice is take pride in the fact that you voted, go about getting ready for winter, clean the gutters and change the tires, bake some pies, and the day before Thanksgiving we’ll know the winners. We can give thanks that democracy worked, even if we had to wait a couple of weeks.
— Wrangell Sentinel
Reader Comments(0)