Control of the United States Senate could hang in limbo for weeks as America’s election fate comes down to a slow-motion vote count across Alaska’s frozen tundra. With 600,000 voters scattered across a vast expanse of 586,000 square miles, the state’s unusual ballot-counting rules and an active legal fight over the contest threaten to delay final results well past Election Day.
The Logistics of the Alaskan Bush
The state’s high-stakes Senate race features Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan against Democrat Mary Peltola. That contest could determine which party ultimately controls the chamber.
Getting every vote counted requires traveling across extreme geography. Alaska relies heavily on small aircraft to connect remote communities and transport physical ballots.
“We will [not] know who is going to win Alaska [until] two weeks after Election Day,” predicted pollster Sean Trende, a polling analyst at RealClearPolitics and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, during an Oct. 20 Election Watch briefing. “It will be a toss-up until the last ballots come in from the Alaskan bush by two-prop engine, and then put it through like five rounds of ranked-choice voting.”
Alaska features 16 times as many aircraft as any other state. While urban centers like Anchorage process votes quickly, tiny hamlets rely on planes, boats, barges, and ferries.
Voters go to extraordinary lengths to participate in the process. At least one family, the Bondys, traveled by dogsled on an eight-hour, 225-mile trek to cast their ballots, a journey featured in the 2016 documentary OneVote.
Deadlines and Ranked-Choice Realities
The timeline is extended by statutory deadlines. Alaska allows more than a week for absentee ballots to arrive, requiring ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received within 10 days to count, and 15 days for overseas ballots.
Historical precedent points to a long wait. When former Alaska state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins won his first election in a tight race back in 2012, victory hinged on waiting for overseas ballots arriving from as far away as Bahrain and Cambodia.
Ranked-choice voting adds another layer to the timeline. Election officials must reexamine ballots to reallocate them when a voter’s initial first-choice candidate fails to make the cut.
Legal Challenges Over the Ballot
Logistical hurdles are compounded by legal disputes. US Sen. Dan Sullivan faces a ballot that also includes a retired elementary school teacher named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit this month seeking to invalidate the election result if the incumbent loses, arguing that the presence of the second candidate on the ballot was an attempt to siphon votes.
Meanwhile, Mary Peltola has pushed back against reports that her campaign engineered the ballot scheme, forcefully blasting the allegations.
President Trump has demanded that Peltola drop out of the race following reports surrounding the duplicate name on the ballot.
As campaigns spar and ballots make their slow journey out of the bush, the nation waits on Alaska.
