Alaska Politics Blog : Alaska voter turnout

Alaska Politics Blog

This is the place to talk about Alaska politics -- state, local, national. Public life in the Last Frontier has probably never been more interesting than right now -- the governor as candidate for vice president, the broad and still-evolving corruption investigation, a big election, powerful members of Congress under scrutiny, and the usual hardball Alaska politics. Come here for news, tidbits and information, and join the discussion. Keep your comments civil and on point. Avoid personal attacks. Do not use profanity. Posts that violate the Terms of Use will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned.

Contributors

Erika Bolstad

Erika Bolstad covers Alaska issues, including the congressional delegation, from Washington, D.C., for McClatchy Newspapers. Before joining the bureau in 2007, she spent seven years as a reporter at the Miami Herald, where she covered politics, government and the state legislature. E-mail Erika at ebolstad@adn.com.

Sean Cockerham

Sean Cockerham writes about Alaska state politics. He spent three years based in Juneau for the ADN before joining the Tacoma News-Tribune to write about Washington state politics. He went to Iraq twice for the News Tribune, and previously wrote about Alaska government and politics for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. E-mail Sean at scockerham@adn.com

Kyle Hopkins

Kyle Hopkins covers politics and other stories for the ADN. He covered the 2006 campaign for governor, has blogged extensively about Alaska politics, covered Anchorage city government and was a reporter based in the Mat-Su. He grew up in Southeast Alaska and previously was a reporter at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Anchorage Press. E-mail Kyle at khopkins@adn.com

Features

SECTION

Alaska political corruption

The FBI raided state legislatures offices in Aug. 2006, and the fallout since has been epic in Alaska's political world.

Alaska voter turnout

Posted by Alaska_Politics

Posted: November 16, 2008 - 6:23 pm

Comments (0) |

From Sean Cockerham in Anchorage --

I have a story going in tomorrow about voter turnout. Bottom line? Turnout for this year’s election looks on track to be the highest ever.

“I think people were premature to jump to conclusions that voter turnout was very low. It’s apparent that a large number of people in this state chose to vote absentee versus in person on Election Day,” said Gail Fenumiai, state elections division director.

The state will count the final absentee and questioned ballots on Tuesday -- about 24,000 of them. Even if a third of the questioned ballots are disqualified, that will put the turnout above 320,000, the most Alaskans who have ever voted.

What’s unusual this year is that nearly a third of the ballots weren’t counted until after Election Day. That’s because of the record number of Alaskans who chose to vote early and absentee.

Thousands of “early votes” weren’t counted until after Election Day to give the state time to double check and make sure people didn’t vote twice. Democrats especially pushed people to vote early and absentee this year, trying to reduce the chance they wouldn’t get around to it on Election Day.

Also, there is a general trend of people preferring alternatives to the traditional Election Day trip to the polls. Absentee voters used to mostly be people who were going to be out of town on Election Day, Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore said, but now people just do it out of convenience.

The state elections division figures the final tally will show about 65 percent of the registered voters in Alaska cast a ballot this year. That is one percentage point lower than in the next highest turnout year in terms of actual voter numbers, 2004, an election in which 313,592 Alaskans cast ballots.

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