Editor’s note: After this story was initially published, Atqasuk’s city mayor said that local poll workers tried to call in election results on Nov. 5 more than 30 times but could not reach the Alaska Division of Elections. Read our updated coverage here.
For more than a week after the Nov. 5 election, the North Slope village of Atqasuk did not report results — making it the last Alaska precinct to do so. City officials said that local poll workers mailed the ballots but missed the directions to call in the results first.
Precincts that don’t use a scanner are instructed to call in their results after they tally the votes on election night, Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said in an email.
Atqasuk City Mayor Douglas Whiteman said that the two local poll workers missed the written instruction to call in the results and just mailed the votes from the village of around 275 residents.
“It was a big mountain of paperwork,” he said. “They did hard work and skipped something.”
Last Wednesday, Whiteman was working to sort out the situation himself.
“I’m puzzled. What was wrong? ... I was calling to find out what was going on,” he said. “How do we fix this?”
Whiteman said the confusion was partially caused by having different procedures for local, borough, state and federal elections. He also said there is a lack of training for the poll workers on election procedures and a need for clearer communication with the Division of Elections.
“Communication’s a little bit fuzzy,” Whiteman said. ”Maybe it could be getting them to have a broader checklist, you know — steps all the way through. Because it is a long, long day, from 7 in the morning to 8 at night.”
Whitman suggested the direction to call in the preliminary votes needed to be highlighted for the poll workers.
Atqasuk poll workers — who worked during the October election as well — brought ballots to the post office on Nov. 5, Whiteman said. Bad weather prevented planes from getting into the village for several days after that, he said.
The election materials were mailed from Atqasuk on Nov. 8, Beecher said. The results from Atqasuk were posted on the Division of Elections’ website on Nov. 14.