Voting districts in Kaktovik and Wales could not be opened for the Alaska primary, the election authority said

The Alaska Department of Elections said two rural Alaska precincts were not allowed to allow people to vote in person on primary day.

Carol Beecher, director of the Elections Authority, said polling stations in Wales and Kaktovik were unable to open on Tuesday. Anaktuvuk Pass opened for voting at about 7:30 p.m. – half an hour before voting closed at 8 p.m.

Beecher said Tuesday afternoon that a poll worker would be flown to Kaktovik to open the precinct. The department has tried to find replacement poll workers to open the precinct in Wales, she added. But both efforts failed to result in any of the precincts opening for voting on Tuesday.

“The department has hired poll workers well in advance of Election Day and provided them with all the materials and training, but sometimes people get sick or quit at short notice and we have to rely on the public’s help to get a polling place open on Election Day,” Beecher said.

(Alaska’s top-4 states’ primaries set the stage for November elections)

According to 2020 U.S. Census data, 425 people lived in Anaktuvuk Pass, a village on the North Slope; 283 people lived in Kaktovik, a village on Barter Island. Wales, the westernmost community on the North American mainland, located north of Nome, had 168 residents.

In the 2022 Alaska primary election, 43 residents of Kaktovik voted, along with 280 residents of Anaktuvuk Pass and 10 people from Wales.

According to Beecher, 399 of Alaska’s 402 polling places were open and operating for the primary election Tuesday afternoon. Most polls opened as scheduled at 7 a.m. Tuesday, but several polling places in Marshall, Shaktoolik and Diomede City did not open until around 10 a.m., Beecher said.

There were also delays in voting in White Mountain, a village of about 185 residents on the Niukluk River in the Nome Census Area. At 2 p.m., Beecher said, the polling station in White Mountain was not yet open. It was then open to voters at 4:30 p.m., she added.

A polling precinct in Kobuk was still open for voting Tuesday morning but was closed in the afternoon because of flooding in western Alaska as a result of a storm in the Bering Sea, Beecher said.

In 2022, polling stations in Tununak and Atmautluak were not opened on election day for this year’s primary and special congressional elections.