Four decades ago, in days before the internet and automatic voter registration, Alaska Natives turned out to vote at high levels.
That participation has eroded badly, a situation that should be reversed, said Michelle Sparck, director of an Alaska nonpartisan organization called Get Out The Native Vote.
Alaska Natives are not fully realizing their power if they do not vote, she said.
“They say that anytime you look at a white male in this country, you know they’re a voter. We should be in that kind of category,” Sparck said in a presentation Oct. 18 at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage.
Alaska Natives represent up to a quarter of the state population, she said. “If we start to vote at our power, if we start to vote at our population, we are a formidable group,” she said.
Overall Native turnout was 66% in 1982, a year when a measure affecting subsistence was on the statewide ballot, according to her calculations. By 2022, it had dropped to about 28%, she said.
The numbers are the same in Southeast Alaska, where the Native turnout was 66% in 1982, falling to 28% in 2022.
Sparck, who is Cup’ik and has roots in the Southwest Alaska village of Chevak, flipped through a series of graphs that showed declining voter participation in every region, from a high of 78.6% in 1982 in the Northwest Arctic, the “rock star” for voting, to 2022 levels around the state that are mired between about 20% and about 30%. Turnout in this year’s primary election was much lower, down to single digits percentages in two regions, her data showed.
“We need to turn these graphs around,” she told the audience.
In formal presentations like Sparck’s, at informational booths lining the convention center rooms and in face-to-face conversations, speakers urged Alaska Natives to step up their voting turnout.
Among those making the plea was Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
“I’m not going to tell you how to vote in a couple of weeks. That is your decision, your prerogative. But I am going to ask you: Please vote. Do vote. Because the process needs you. It needs each and every one of you. Whether you’re from a small village or an urban area, your voice matters,” Murkowski said in her Oct. 19 speech to the convention.
She referred to her 2010 reelection, in which she beat a more conservative GOP nominee through a historic write-in campaign mobilized by Alaska Native leaders.
“Collectively your voices become stronger, and you know, because you’ve demonstrated it. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it,” she said.
The Alaska Beacon is an independent, donor-funded news organization. Alaskabeacon.com.
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