Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, independent Al Gross and Democrat Mary Peltola consolidated their leads in the race to advance to the special general election in August for the only seat in the US House of Representatives in Alaska, according to an updated ballot count on Wednesday.
By Wednesday night, officials had counted nearly 134,000 votes. Another count is expected on Friday, with a final count on Tuesday and the goal of certifying the election results on June 25.
The top four vote winners in the 48-candidate special primary will advance to the August 16 special general election. The outcome of that election will determine who will serve the last few months of the late US Rep. Don Young’s two votes. term of one year. Young died unexpectedly in March after 49 years in office.
Another election to fill out the two-year term is scheduled for November, with a primary in August.
Palin, in her first campaign since resigning as governor of Alaska in 2009, is in the lead with 28.2% of the vote so far. Begich, a businessman and member of a prominent family of Democrats, has 19.2% of the vote. Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who ran unsuccessfully as an independent for the US Senate in 2020 with the backing of the Democratic Party, is in third place with 12.7% of the vote. Peltola, a former state legislator on leave from her work in fisheries management, is in fourth place with 8.8% of the vote.
Republican Tara Sweeney, an Alaska Native leader who has held high-ranking positions with the US Department of the Interior and Arctic Slope Regional Corp., is in fifth place with 5.6% of the vote. Santa Claus, a progressive independent councilor from the North Pole, is in sixth place with 4.5% of the vote.
[One election down, three to go: Here’s what’s next in Alaska’s U.S. House race]
Palin, Begich and Gross already seemed confident of advancing to the general election based on results released Saturday. But fourth place was previously less certain, with some wondering if Sweeney could overtake Peltola. Results released Wednesday increased the likelihood that Peltola, with a 4,300-vote lead over Sweeney, would advance to the general election.
“I felt like the second batch of counts would trend with the first batch, but they trend even better for my campaign,” Peltola said. “I’m very excited about it.”
Peltola contracted COVID-19 while campaigning in Juneau last week. He tested positive for the virus and has been isolating in Anchorage. She said she hopes to travel to her home in Bethel later this week and will resume campaigning in Anchorage once the election results are certified.
“I’m definitely not motivated to go out there and act like it’s a done deal,” Peltola said. “I still think it’s too early to celebrate.”
In a statement Wednesday night, Sweeney appeared to concede the main race but did not say whether he would remain in the race for the two-year term.
“My goal was to be in the top four in the special election. Based on the Division of Elections results release, it looks like I’m going to come up short. In the next few days I will be meeting with my campaign team and supporters to determine the next steps for the regular election,” said Sweeney, who is running as a moderate Republican.
Sixth-place candidate Claus, whose birth name is Thomas O’Connor, said Wednesday that he had not yet given up the chance of advancing to the general election.
“I’m happy for Mary, but I’m going to hold out because we have two more vote counts left,” said Claus, who has campaigned on child welfare issues. “I think the results could change.”
The Anchorage-area ballot count still lags behind counts in other regions. Elections officials counted Anchorage-area votes received before June 8, while most other areas counted ballots received before June 11. The Division of Elections will count all ballots postmarked by June 11 and received before June 21.
The top four candidates are also running in the regular November election to fill the US House of Representatives seat for a full two-year term beginning in January. The primary for that race, which currently includes 31 candidates, will be held on the same day as the special general election, Aug. 16.
“We have two August races to think about,” Jones said.
According to figures released Wednesday, the state rejected 6,255 of the 161,000 ballots had received by then, or about 3.5%. That percentage is similar to the number of rejected absentee ballots in previous years, but the total number is much higher because this election was conducted almost entirely by mail, with many more voters using absentee ballots. And in some regions of the state where English is not the primary language spoken in many homes, the ballot rejection rate was significantly higher.
That includes some rural Indian constituencies: In Bethel, the central city of southwestern Alaska, where Peltola is from, 17% of ballots were rejected.
“This is not a surprise,” Peltola said. “In Alaska, we take summer very seriously. That leaves a lot of time and attention for things like learning about a new ballot system.”
In a letter written by Alaska Senate Democrats to Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai and Lt. Governor Kevin Meyer, they expressed concern about ballot rejection rates in some regions, including Nome and the surrounding area, where the rate rejection rate was 15%, and the Mountain View neighborhood of Anchorage, where the rejection rate was 9%.
The senators called the statistics “staggering and unacceptable” and said they are “seeking an immediate explanation of the reasons for the rejections and how the division plans to ensure that such failures in the voting process never happen again.”
Elections Division spokeswoman Tiffany Montemayor said the division has not reviewed the letter and has no response at this time to the concerns raised in it.
“These numbers, if verified, mean that Alaska Natives and other minorities and residents of less affluent areas have been denied their right to vote,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Begich, D-Anchorage. it’s a statement. “Voting by mail works, but only if it is implemented so that all citizens have the opportunity to have their vote counted.”
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