A Democratic lawmaker sounded the alarm Friday over at least 18 rural Alaska polling places that were advertised online but hadn’t opened, all in villages the New York Times described as “key to Democratic hopes.”
“There is no legal excuse for the failure to open these sites,” state Sen. Bill Wielechowski wrote in a letter to Alaska election officials and Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, whose office runs elections.
According to Wielechowski, the people tapped to staff those sites never got their voting supplies, and some had no idea the job was theirs.
The warning came a day after Trump’s Justice Department took Alaska to court to head off certification of the state’s Senate results if GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan loses a close race. Federal lawyers claimed Sullivan’s supporters might accidentally vote for a different Dan Sullivan, a retired teacher also on the ballot. Legal observers widely doubted the theory, the Times reported.
Former Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat in the race, outpolled Sullivan in Alaska’s top-four primary in August and has held a polling edge ever since.
Mike Jones, tribal president of the Haida Organized Village of Kasaan, suspected the problems were intentional. Alaska’s voting systems are “designed to be confusing and hold people up,” he told the Times.
Michelle Sparck of Get Out the Native Vote called it “just the usual logistical failure,” saying rural sites run into the same trouble year after year. Village ballots arriving too late cost voters in 2022, the Times noted, and mail snags kept some rural sites from opening on time two years later.
Sparck wasn’t hopeful about a quick fix. She told the Times she couldn’t see the state getting those villages’ sites running in time.
The Times said it couldn’t reach the state elections division on Saturday.