Five rural Alaska early voting sites are closed less than a week before Election Day

Early voting sites in at least five rural Alaska villages are closed less than a week before the Nov. 3 election, and a state senator says at least 18 had not opened as of last week.

The Division of Elections' list of early voting locations marks the sites in Ekwok, Goodnews Bay, Kongiganak, Mertarvik and Scammon Bay as "Temporary Closure," with no reason and no reopening date. The division updated each listing Monday.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski said at least 18 early voting sites in rural villages had not opened as of Friday, Oct. 23, four days after early voting began statewide. Social media posts relaying his count said the affected villages all have majority Alaska Native populations.

Each of the five villages with a listed closure also has an Election Day polling place on the division's polling place list.

Voters anywhere in the state can still request a ballot by online delivery or fax until 5 pm Nov. 2, according to the division's absentee voting instructions. Online delivery requires an email address, a computer and a printer. The state warns that returning a ballot by fax waives the right to a secret ballot.

On Tuesday, demonstrators outside the division's Juneau office held signs reading "Let Rural Alaska VOTE" and "OPEN the voting sites in all villages," according to photos posted by Corinne Smith.

In May, a senator asked the division's director whether rural polling locations would have staff this fall. "We are doing very well on that, have most of them identified," the director said at a Senate State Affairs hearing.

After the August primary, the division said all 402 precinct polling places had opened, the first time since 2016 that every primary poll was accessible, according to its primary election report.

The day before that primary, the Alaska Federation of Natives, Cook Inlet Tribal Council and First Alaskans Institute called on the division to publicly account for rural election-worker vacancies and plan for any precinct that couldn't be fully staffed. They said the division's Nome office had not opened on time for early voting Aug. 15.

In September, the division let 10 communities without a regular polling place vote in person on Election Day. About 75 absentee in-person ballots from the Nome region had arrived too late to count in the primary.

A bill lawmakers passed in March would have created a rural community liaison in the division, added tribal IDs to the accepted forms of voter identification and let absentee voters fix mistakes on their ballot envelopes. The Senate Rules Committee, which Wielechowski chairs, sponsored it. Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed the bill April 29, and an override vote failed 38 to 22.