If you’re in quarantine or isolation because of COVID-19 and can’t get to the polls, here are two ways to cast your vote.
Special Needs Ballot
A Special Needs Ballot is for people who are unable to get to the polls because of illness, age, or disability. Here’s how it works:
You select someone you trust to pick up a special needs ballot at the polls. This ballot can be picked up at an early voting location or an Election Day polling place.
The person who picks up your ballot is called your personal representative. According to the Alaska Division of Elections, this person "can be anyone except a candidate for office in the election, your employer, an agent of your employer, or an officer or agent of your union.”
Your personal representative brings you the special needs ballot. You fill it out, place it in the secrecy sleeve, and then seal it in the special needs envelope. You then fill out the outside of the envelope, and your personal representative signs the envelope as your witness.
Your personal representative must return the special needs ballot to a polling location before 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3.
Click this link to go the the Alaska Division of Elections Special Needs Voting page.
The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot has passed, but there is another option for voting while in quarantine.
Electronic Transmission
Through Nov. 2, Alaskans can request a ballot be emailed or faxed to them. The voter can then print off the ballot, fill it out, and faxed, mailed, or submitted to a polling location. To request a ballot via email or fax, fill out this form.
The ballot can be submitted to an election worker at an early voting location or at the polls on Election Day.
The ballot can be faxed to the Alaska Division of Elections by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.
Or the the ballot can be dropped in the mail and postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3. The U.S. Postal Service encourages voters to mail ballots early, and warns that ballots mailed on Election Day might not be postmarked for that date. Mail sent in Alaska gets postmarked in Anchorage, but voters can request that a local postal worker postmark their ballots by hand at their local post office. People in quarintine or isolation can ask someone they trust to get their ballot postmarked.
