A week after most U.S. states knew their midterm results, Alaskans are still waiting for a Senate race to be called, the BBC reported.
For weeks, Alaska Seaplanes has carried midterm election ballots along with its usual payload of passengers, medicine and supplies. The regional airline is part of a logistical puzzle that moves ballots, cast by mail and in person, across a state connected more by water and air than by roads. The close contest between incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic challenger and former congresswoman Mary Peltola could remain unknown until Nov. 18, when officials expect to have counted all eligible ballots.
"We do feel a sense of pride of making sure we do the job right — the really complicated job of getting all these ballots across thousands of miles in Alaska," Andy Kline, the marketing director of Alaska Seaplanes, which serves the southeastern part of the state, told the BBC. "We feel like we're part of the last leg of that journey of those ballots."
By plane and boat, to Juneau
Some precincts can communicate initial results to centralized election offices on election night, allowing preliminary tallies. But the full picture takes longer. Besides the challenge of counting votes across a state more than six times the size of the United Kingdom, there is a delay waiting for mail ballots to arrive, said Charles Stewart, an election expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Those ballots can arrive up to 10 days later, or 15 days for overseas voters, if postmarked by Election Day. Stewart said officials had "chosen to err on the side of getting it right rather than a rush to report the second and third tranches of ballots that get counted."
Regardless of whether ballots were cast in person or by mail, all of them eventually wind up in Juneau, which is only reachable by plane or boat, for scanning and counting. More urban districts can get materials on a plane late on election night; it takes longer for smaller or more remote parts of Alaska. In some places, "you get someone who's basically running the election for their family and their neighbours because it's such a small village," said Scott Kendall, an election lawyer who previously worked on two campaigns for Alaska's other Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski.
In smaller areas, ballots are sealed in special envelopes or containers and sent through the mail, which is where companies like Alaska Seaplanes come in. The boxes go to Juneau, are dropped at the post office and delivered. "It's part of our daily routine, just another couple of boxes," Kline said.
Once all in-person and absentee mail ballots reach Juneau, officials will complete their review. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, officials will use ranked-choice voting to reallocate votes from the lowest-scoring candidates to voters' second choices. Then Alaska will declare a winner for its Senate race, as well as contests for governor and the U.S. House, the BBC reported. Democrats have already won back both chambers of Congress, but Alaska's Senate result is still on the plane.