What you need to know about the Alaska primary elections that end Tuesday

Voting in the 2024 Alaska primary ends Tuesday at 8 p.m.

Alaskans will vote in the pick-one primary for the state’s only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. All 40 of the state’s House seats are up for election Tuesday, along with half of the Senate’s 20 seats.

The polling stations open at 7 a.m. on election day and close at 8 p.m.

The Alaska Division of Elections maintains a list of polling places on its website, which can also be searched by zip code.

The first results from the primary election are expected around 9 p.m. The results will be released later in the night, state election officials said.

The election authority plans to certify the results of the primary election by September 1. The deadline for candidates to withdraw from the general election is September 2.

In 2020, Alaska voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative that established ranked-choice voting and open primaries. Voters choose one candidate in each race on the primary ballot. The four candidates with the most votes in each race, regardless of political affiliation, advance to the November 5 general election, which is decided by ranked-choice voting.

Absentee ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted. Absentee ballots will be counted if they are received by the election authority within 10 days of Election Day.

Poll workers reported confusion among some voters in Anchorage who expected to automatically receive a mail-in ballot, as is required for the city’s municipal elections. That is not the case in state-run elections; only voters who requested a mail-in ballot received one in the mail.

Voters must provide an identification number on their absentee ballot envelope—such as their driver’s license number or date of birth. They must sign the absentee ballot envelope themselves and have a witness sign the envelope.

In 2022, nearly 7,500 absentee ballots were rejected in the state’s first all-mail special congressional election—two-thirds of those votes were rejected due to errors on the ballot envelope.

(Most candidates in Alaska are already thinking about November, so Tuesday’s primary is still important.)

U.S. Department of Justice officials will monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws in various Western Alaska locations on primary election day. Federal officials will also monitor whether adequate voting assistance is provided in Yup’ik dialects, the department said in a statement.

Two years ago, federal officials pointed to problems at several rural polling places, including a lack of bilingual poll workers.

Voting by mail ahead of Tuesday’s primary was down compared to the 2020 and 2022 primaries, which were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Sunday, just over 20,000 Alaska residents had already voted in person or by mail for the Aug. 20 primary, according to the Elections Department.

Early voting for the primaries began on August 5.

Lauri Wilson, the Region 1 elections director, said Monday that early voting turnout in Juneau was “pretty low.” In the Mendenhall Valley, however, in-person voting had increased by Monday, she added.

In Anchorage, a large number of early voters cast their ballots throughout the weekend and into Monday, according to poll workers at the Region 2 office.

Twelve candidates are running for Alaska’s only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Incumbent Democratic Representative Mary Peltola is running against Republican frontrunners Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom and businessman Nick Begich III.

The primary will reduce the list of congressional candidates in Alaska from 12 to four. Begich has announced that he will drop out of the race if he is not the top-ranking Republican candidate after the primary. Dahlstrom has made no similar announcement.

The race for Congress is in one of the few swing districts in the U.S. and is being closely watched across the country. Alaska’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is one of five held by a Democrat who voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Forty-eight races for the Alaska Legislature have four or fewer candidates on the ballot, meaning any candidate in those elections can advance to the general election. Candidates and political consultants say positioning in those elections can still be critical for fundraising and building momentum through November.

Two races for the Alaska Legislature have more than four candidates: a race for the Senate seat in Eagle River with five candidates and a race for a vacant House seat in Fairbanks – the largest voting district in the country. One candidate from Eagle River is expected to drop out in the primary; two candidates are expected to drop out for the Fairbanks House seat, which includes Tok, Delta Junction and Fort Yukon.

Voters in the primary election will not see any popular initiatives on Tuesday’s ballot. A ballot proposal to eliminate ranked-choice voting and another to increase the state’s minimum wage will appear on the November general election ballot. Nineteen state judges running for re-election will also appear on the general election ballot.

“This ballot in the primary election is very simple and voting should be very quick,” said Jeff Congdon, the elections authority’s Region 2 director. “The ballot in the general election in November is much more complex.”

Alaska’s presidential primaries are conducted separately by political parties. An overwhelming majority of Republicans voted for former President Donald Trump in their March presidential primary. Alaska Democrats have thrown their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out last month.

Peltola is one of a handful of Democratic congresswomen who have chosen not to attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. She was scheduled to vote in Anchorage on Monday night and appear at an event in Kenai on Wednesday, a day before Harris is set to formally accept the Democratic presidential nomination. Peltola is Alaska’s highest-profile Democrat who has refused to endorse Harris.

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