Alaska Election Day Updates: Polls are now closed across the state

Many Alaskans made the trip to the ballot boxes Candidates for the presidency, U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures will vote on Tuesday, and they will also decide on two ballot measures. Check back throughout the evening for new updates as returns come in.

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The polling stations are now closed

Update, 8 p.m: Polls in Alaska are closed. The answers will be released by the Alaska Division of Elections later this evening.

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Candidates in the tight US House of Representatives await results in Anchorage

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola and her Republican challenger Nick Begich III both planned events Tuesday in Anchorage. Peltola was scheduled to appear at a party hosted by her campaign at 49th State Brewing downtown. Begich's party was held a few blocks away at the Marriott Hotel.

Both candidates had spent the day before the election in Anchorage and cast their votes there. Begich said he didn't wait long at the early voting site in Eagle River. Peltola faced a two-hour line at the Anchorage City Hall polling place late Monday morning. Begich and Peltola also spent some of the final hours before the polls closing no-waiver signs at busy intersections in Anchorage.

Otherwise, “pace-setting” is on the agenda for Peltola on election day, she said on Tuesday morning.

Alaska's only congressional race is considered one of the most competitive in the country, and the House of Representatives is once again expected to be sharply divided. The election prompted tens of millions of dollars in advertising spending and weeks of attacks on Peltola and Begich.

Begich said Monday he was “cautiously optimistic.”

Peltola said she feels “a lot more gratitude” this year than she did in 2022, when she first won the seat. She said her campaign was supported by an army of volunteers who knocked on doors and made phone calls on her behalf.

“We don’t build the plane the way we fly it,” she said.

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Polls are open everywhere except two villages in western Alaska

According to the elections department, polls opened statewide at 7 a.m. Tuesday, but not in two western Alaska villages.

Voting in St. George, home to 31 registered voters, didn't begin until 2 p.m. because of a storm, elections department director Carol Beecher said Tuesday.

In Wales, where 63 registered voters live, the polling station also did not open as planned. Beecher said a team of poll workers is ready to deploy to the community but is “waiting for weather to permit travel.”

The constituency in Wales opened at 4pm. At this time, all polling locations across the state were operating as scheduled.

Wales, a village in western Alaska, was also ineligible to vote in the August primary. The elections department said at the time it tried to find replacement poll workers to open the precinct, but none were available.

Beecher said Monday that the elections department planned to send poll workers to Egegik, a village in southwest Alaska, so the polling place could open as planned on Tuesday to the village's 96 registered voters.

Meanwhile, in South Anchorage, 3,100 people were without power due to power outages. The outage affected some voters at Tudor Elementary School, who briefly used flashlights to cast ballots until power was restored.

(Election Day in Alaska: How to vote, what's on the ballot and when to expect results)

Polls will be open statewide until 8 p.m. Alaskans can find their polling place online. In Anchorage, voters can also cast their ballots at Ted Stevens International Airport and the Division of Elections offices in Midtown, regardless of their precinct.

The elections department's website was temporarily offline Tuesday morning due to high web traffic. The website was back online shortly before 10 a.m

Counting the ballot papers

Once polls close, poll workers are expected to begin counting ballots cast in person on Tuesday, along with some early votes and mail-in ballots received at Alaska Division of Elections offices through the end of October.

That leaves thousands of early and mail-in ballots that won't be counted until a week after Election Day, meaning there could be some tight races with no clear winner until later this month.

The elections department expects just over 31,000 mail-in ballots to be counted as of Tuesday evening, but only 155 of those came from rural counties in the state, including the North Slope and Southwest, West and Northwest Alaska.

(Photos: Election Day in Anchorage)

The elections department reported that about 79,000 mail-in ballots had been issued to voters and that nearly 49,000 of them had been returned as of Sunday. Absentee ballots from abroad can be counted as long as they are received by the elections department within 15 days of Election Day.

Additionally, nearly 62,000 Alaska residents voted at one of a dozen early voting locations before Tuesday.

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