Many Alaskans headed out to the polls On Tuesday, we will vote for the president, U.S. House of Representatives and state legislative candidates, and they will also decide on two ballot measures. Check back during the evening for further updates as returns arrive.

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The polling stations are now closed

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

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Candidates in a tight battle for the U.S. House of Representatives await results in Anchorage

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

Both candidates had spent the day before the election in Anchorage, where they cast their votes. Begich said he didn’t wait long at the early voting location in Eagle River. Peltola was faced with a two-hour line at the Anchorage City Hall voting location late Monday morning. Begich and Peltola also spent some of the final hours before the polls shutting down road signs at busy intersections in Anchorage.

Otherwise, “pacing” was on the Election Day agenda for Peltola, she said Tuesday morning.

Alaska’s lone congressional race is seen as one of the most competitive in the country in what is expected to be another closely divided House. The election resulted in tens of millions of dollars in advertising spending and weeks of attacks on both Peltola and Begich.

Begich said Monday he was feeling “cautiously optimistic.”

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

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

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Polls are open everywhere except in two towns in Western Alaska

Polls opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday across the state, but not in two Western Alaska communities, the Division of Elections said.

Voting in St. George, home to 31 registered voters, didn’t start until 2 p.m. because of a storm, Carol Beecher, director of the Division of Elections, said Tuesday.

Polling stations also did not open as planned in Wales, where 63 registered voters live. Beecher said a team of election workers was ready to deploy to the community but was “waiting for weather to allow travel.”

The Wales district opened at 4pm, with all polling stations in the state functioning as planned.

Wales, a town in Western Alaska, was also unable to vote in the August primary. The Department of Elections said at the time that they had tried to find replacement polling places to open the precinct, but there were none.

Beecher said Monday that the Elections Department planned to send poll workers to Egegik, a village in southwestern Alaska, so that the polls could open as scheduled Tuesday for the village’s 96 registered voters.

Meanwhile, downed power lines in South Anchorage left 3,100 people without power. The outage affected some voters at Tudor Elementary School, who briefly cast ballots using flashlights until power was restored.

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

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

The Department of Elections website was temporarily offline on Tuesday morning due to high levels of web traffic. The website was back online shortly before 10 a.m

Counting ballots

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

That leaves thousands of early and absentee ballots that won’t be counted until a week after Election Day, meaning there could remain some close races without a clear winner until later this month.

The Division of Elections expects to count just over 31,000 mail-in ballots 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 Division of Elections reported that approximately 79,000 absentee ballots had been issued to voters, and of those, nearly 49,000 had been returned as of Sunday. Absentee ballots arriving from abroad can be counted as long as they arrive at the Division of Elections within 15 days of Election Day.

Additionally, nearly 62,000 Alaskans cast ballots at one of 12 early voting locations before Tuesday.

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