Although the Alaska Division of Elections has finished tallying votes from the Nov. 3 election, Haines Borough residents will never know the final tally for how the community voted in the 2020 state and federal election.
That’s because early and absentee votes are counted differently. While in-person votes on election day are machine-counted immediately in the precinct in which they are cast, absentee and early votes aren’t.
“As absentee ballots arrive at our regional offices, they are organized by House district and then reviewed and counted by district. The ballots themselves and the return envelopes do not denote precincts. So unfortunately, there is no way to discern what precinct an absentee ballot came from,” a division spokesperson said.
In Haines’ case, early and absentee votes were mailed to Juneau and batched with the rest of House District 33 votes, which includes ballots from downtown Juneau, Gustavus and Skagway. While this occurs every year, the lack of precinct-specific data for these ballots is noteworthy this year due to the large number of absentee and early votes cast.
Spurred by COVID-19 concerns, this year, Alaska saw a record-setting number of early and absentee ballots in the general election, more than 40% of the total votes cast. In House District 33, the 5,236 absentee and 2,633 early ballots made up the majority of votes cast in the district. In total, 11,061 people voted in House District 33 this election. Early and absentee votes in the district broke for Democrats at a roughly 4-1 rate.
In the Chilkat Valley precincts—Haines No. 1, Haines No. 2 and Kukwan—in-person election day votes favored Republican candidates. President Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in the presidential race by a margin of 92 election-day votes.
Statewide, Trump and Republican incumbents Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young won in their respective races. Of the 40 members of the Alaska State House, 21 seats are now held by Republicans and 19 are held by a combination of Democrats and independents. In the State Senate, 13 seats are held by Republicans and seven by Democrats.
Ballot Measure 1, which proposes changing the oil and gas tax structure for certain North Slope fields, was voted down. Ballot Measure 2, which proposes changes to the state election process including ranked choice voting, was approved.
The state’s target date to certify election results is Nov. 25.