The midterm elections are almost over. Polls open for Election Day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
But if history is any guide, it could be some time before results become clear — especially in Alaska.
Here’s what to know about when to expect results.
Alaska counts slowly.
Some states count ballots very quickly. Alaska is not one of them. For instance, it took roughly two weeks to call a winner of the state’s U.S. Senate race in 2008 and 2010.
The slow pace is due in part to the fact that state law allows overseas absentee ballots to arrive as many as 15 days after Election Day, though they have to be postmarked by Nov. 3. That, and it’s complicated and difficult to run an election in a vast, sparsely populated state like Alaska, said Burke Croft with the consulting firm Ship Creek Group.
“The No. 1 biggest thing that characterizes so much of Alaska's elections is just the state’s size and the unique logistical challenges that come with that,” Croft said in an interview.
In most areas, ballots are tabulated by machine. But in 131 of the state’s more than 400 precincts, election workers count ballots by hand, then read the results over the phone to regional offices.
The first results should appear around 9 p.m.
The first batch of results will be posted online between 8:45 and 9 p.m. Alaska Time, according to the Division of Elections. Election officials say they’ll provide ongoing updates late into the evening and early morning hours. The Election Night counts will include votes cast at the polls that day, plus early votes cast before Friday and some absentee ballots, according to election officials.
Based on historical trends, the results reported on Election Night tend to represent around 70% of the overall vote, Croft said. That means even after Tuesday night, it’ll be tough to make any definitive calls in close races. Candidates leading after Election Night could go on to lose, he said.
“In elections past, we've seen shifts as large as four or so points,” Croft said. “So we can expect some amount of uncertainty as results come in after Election Day.”
Alaska Public Media relies on the Associated Press for race calls.
Nearly all votes will likely be counted by Nov. 13
Election officials are scheduled to provide updated counts 7, 10 and 15 days after Election Day. They sometimes also update totals outside that schedule.
The first scheduled update on Nov. 10 is expected to include almost all of the early vote, plus a large batch of absentee ballots mostly from off the road system, according to historical data Croft cited. By the next scheduled update on Nov. 13, nearly all ballots should be counted, and the last remaining votes will be included in the final unofficial update on Nov. 18.
Ranking won’t happen until Nov. 18, but we’ll get raw data Election Night
Ranked choice voting will be a factor in any race where no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote. Those could include high-profile races like governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House. But the Division of Elections won’t officially tabulate voters’ choices until Nov. 18.
However, election officials are planning to release raw data that could offer glimpses of how voters ranked candidates with each scheduled update, starting with the last batch of Election Night results, Division of Elections spokesperson Steve Kirch said Monday. They’ll release updated data Nov. 10, Nov. 13 and Nov. 18, he said. The data requires specialized software to read.
The division declined to say why it doesn’t perform their own preliminary ranked choice tabulation alongside the scheduled updates instead of simply releasing raw data.
Election officials plan to certify the election by Nov. 25. Any recounts would have to be requested within five days of certification.
Alaska could report results faster with a few reforms
There are ways the state could provide faster results. Former Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai and former regional supervisor Jeremy Johnson laid out a few suggestions in an Anchorage Daily News op-ed. Ranked choice voting is not to blame, the pair wrote.
“We can say unequivocally that this is not the case,” they wrote.
Officials could tabulate the results more often without any change to the law, they wrote.
Fenumiai, who retired in 2022 after 11 years as director, conducted the first two ranked choice elections in Alaska and opted to wait until the 15th day “out of an abundance of caution,” she wrote. But that caution has served its purpose, she said, and more frequent tabulation would help Alaskans understand where results stand as more votes are counted.
“People would kind of have an idea, a better idea, I guess, where things actually sit after each seven- and 10-day count, versus having to wait till the 15th day,” she said.
Fenumiai and Johnson also offered a few reforms that legislators could change in state law.
Electronic poll books could cut down on the wait for early vote results. Same-day voter registration could reduce the number of question ballots, which require a labor-intensive review. And allowing officials to process and scan absentee ballots before polls close could also speed counting. Replacing a witness signature requirement with an electronic voter-signature-verification system could also save time, she said.
For now, though, Fenumiai urged voters to simply be patient.
“You've got a lot of great people that work at the Division,” she said. “They have a lot of integrity.”