Dan Sullivan

Alaska is still days, if not more than a week, away from determining many of its election winners. That’s not uncommon for the vast state with many communities only reachable by air or sea.

The Alaska Division of Elections has counted 215,912 ballots as of Wednesday afternoon, when the most recent results were posted. The ballots counted so far include those cast on Election Day, early votes cast more than four days before the election and some absentee ballots.

The division estimates that there are roughly 20,000 early votes — those cast between Friday and Monday right before Election Day — and around 40,000 absentee ballots received so far, most of which still need to be counted. With up to potentially 60,000 ballots or so still uncounted, roughly one-quarter of all votes have not been tallied.

That leaves the final results of many of Alaska’s statewide and legislative races undecided in the days after Election Day. The lengthy ballot-counting process has thrust the state’s election system into the national spotlight as Alaskans and Outside political observers alike wait to see if the state will join others that Democrats flipped out of Republican control in key races Tuesday night.

The next round of updated results is scheduled to be posted Monday or Tuesday, according to Steve Kirch, spokesperson for the Division of Elections. That count will include most of the ballots cast in early voting in the four days leading up to the election as well as some absentee ballots, and will likely add tens of thousands of votes to the count.

For races that are still too close to call, a clear front-runner may not emerge until Nov. 18, the deadline for the final absentee ballots to be received by the Division of Elections. On that day, ranked choice tabulation will also take place.

Under ranked choice tabulation, in races with more than two candidates, if no candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes, then the candidate who received the fewest votes is eliminated. Their supporters’ votes are then redistributed to those voters’ second choices, in a process that some have compared to an instant runoff. The process continues until one of the candidates has received more than 50% of the vote.

In the governor’s race, Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins took an early lead with 49% of the vote against three Republican challengers. In the U.S. House race, Republican incumbent Rep. Nick Begich has pulled ahead with 49.5%, ahead of independent Bill Hill with 40.3% as of Wednesday.

The race between Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola and incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan remains too close to call, with the two front-runners separated by only 637 votes.

Peltola has 48% of the vote and Sullivan has 47.7% in the most recent counts, giving the Democrat a slight edge. Gerald Heikes, a Republican perennial candidate from Palmer, is running in third with 4,846 votes, or 2.3% of the vote. Daniel J. Sullivan, the namesake challenger to the incumbent Sullivan and a retired educator from Petersburg, is running in fourth with 3,600 votes, or 1.7%.

Despite their small numbers, it’s clear that ballots for the Petersburg Sullivan and Heikes could help decide the winner of the race under Alaska’s ranked choice voting system.

Both campaigns for the incumbent Sullivan and Peltola have pointed to cast vote record data for ballots available that was released by the Division of Elections, arguing the data shows a path to victory for each candidate’s respective side.

Local and national media outlets have also used the data to complete their own ranked choice tabulation of the results to predict outcomes.

But the data used for preliminary ranked choice tabulation at this point is incomplete. There are still tens of thousands of ballots yet to be tallied. Voter data that can be tabulated is also not fully available yet because many rural polling places don’t have ballot scanners, which means initial Election Day results from rural areas don’t include all of voters’ rankings — and instead, they only show first-choice votes at this point.

In some cases, Alaska voters who are ranking candidates cross party lines in their second- and third-choice votes, which makes predicting the outcome in especially tight races difficult with so many ballots outstanding.

Alaska is one of 29 states that have “no excuse” absentee voting, meaning that anyone can request an absentee ballot without providing a reason.

In the 2024 election, over 51,000 of the more than 340,000 ballots counted were cast by mail.

Alaska offers a generous window of time for by-mail absentee ballots to arrive and still be counted. All ballots mailed from within the U.S. must arrive at the division within 10 days of Election Day, and those mailed from outside the country must arrive within 15 days, as long as they’re postmarked on or before Election Day.

The lengthy ballot count timeline accounts for some of the state’s unique challenges conducting an election. In rural Alaska, weather can delay the pickup and delivery of election materials. Even without weather-related delays, mail service in rural Alaska communities can be limited, which can also lead to postal service delays when delivering ballots to the Division of Elections.

The state’s ranked choice general election format, with races featuring the top four candidates from the primary, can also make the front-runners less apparent in initial results for more competitive races.

Nov. 18 is the deadline for the remaining ballots to reach state elections offices to be counted in the election. On that day, the Division of Elections will conduct ranked choice tabulation for the races where no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.

Former election officials have called on lawmakers to change Alaska’s election laws by allowing the division to process and scan absentee ballots before Election Day, and implement more electronic verification systems.

For in-person voting on Election Day and during early voting, a poll worker checks a voter’s ID and verifies their identity against information in the voter registration database before their ballot is cast. With verification, their ballot is clear to be counted.

Absentee ballots, whether cast by mail or in person, are counted separately, and the voter’s identity is verified after the ballot reaches the Division of Elections. Those ballots are required to include a personal identifier, such as a birthdate or the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number, as well as the voter’s signature and a witness signature. Only after the voter’s identity is verified will their ballot be counted.

Of the more than 40,000 absentee ballots that the division has received — but not counted — 570 have been rejected so far. In the 2024 general election, the division rejected 1,303 ballots, citing “improper or insufficient witnessing” for many of those ballots.

Dozens of ballots mailed from rural Alaska were not counted in the August primary because they failed to reach Division of Elections regional offices before Aug. 31, the deadline to be counted. About 1 in 30 absentee ballots cast in the primary were rejected for procedural errors, with late postmarking being the most frequent reason for ballots to be denied.

State lawmakers during the last session passed an election reform measure that would have, among other actions, put in place a system for ballot curing that would allow voters to fix minor mistakes on their ballots, such as a missing signature. The bill was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

Nov. 9 or 10: Division of Elections is scheduled to release another count of early, absentee and questioned ballots.

Friday, Nov. 13: The deadline for the division to receive all by-mail absentee ballots sent from within the U.S. The division is also scheduled to release another round of results.

Wednesday, Nov. 18: The final deadline for any absentee ballots sent from overseas to arrive at the Division of Elections. The divis