Division of Elections Releases Updated Vote Tally

On Tuesday afternoon, the Alaska Division of Elections released additional counts of absentee and other ballots that were not counted on Election Day. Statewide, that means about five thousand more votes have been counted since last Thursday’s update. Many more ballots remain to be counted, and absentee mail-in ballots that were marked on Election Day can arrive through the end of this week and still be counted.  Ballots mailed from out of state have until next Wednesday to arrive.

All current counts are unofficial and only represent the first choice of Alaska voters.  Once the deadline for all ballots to arrive has expired, the Alaska Division of Elections will conduct the ranked choice tabulation to determine the winners of many races around the state.  That process is expected to be live streamed.

In the U.S. Senate race, incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski narrowed the lead of challenger and fellow Republican Kelly Tshibaka.  As of Tuesday afternoon, Murkowski has pulled within 3,000 votes, a little more than one percent of votes cast in that election.

The race for U.S. House saw incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola slightly extend her margin in the current counts.  Former Governor Sarah Palin currently maintains her hold on second place over fellow Republican Nick Begich.

Governor Mike Dunleavy still holds about fifty-two of the first-choice votes counted thus far in his bid for re-election.  If Dunleavy holds more than fifty percent of first-choice votes in the final tally, no ranked-choice tabulation will be needed and he would win outright.

While 5,000 additional ballots were counted across the state, none of those were in District 30.  That is the district that now contains the Northern Susitna Valley as well as the Denali Borough and areas of the Western Mat-Su.

Currently, voter turnout in District 30 stands at about forty-one percent.  That’s down about ten percent from the midterm voter turnout in 2018.