The cold doesn’t bother them at all: More than 40,000 residents of Alaska, located at the northwestern tip of the American continent, went out to vote today (Thursday) in the primary elections for the presidency of the USA, in Alaska as a whole approximately 611,000 voters are registered. But the democratic right to vote is not guaranteed to everyone – in the remote native villages in Alaska there is not even an active polling station.
At the beginning of last summer, George Kalik, a whaling captain in the small indigenous village of Kaktovik, located on an island in the Arctic Sea near the northern coast of the country, posted an ad on the blue bulletin board in the community house. “Attention residents,” it says, “We are looking for a chairman of an election committee to manage the August and November elections.” Those interested – please contact the voting department in the city of Nome” but no one came forward, Kalik told the American news agency “Associated Press” and the state failed to provide inspectors or poll workers.
When the presidential primaries opened on August 20, the polling station in the small town of Kaktovik was not opened and no alternative place was provided for the 189 registered voters to vote. “I knew there wasn’t even anyone to open it,” he said at the beginning of the month.
What would shake the ground under the feet of politicians, voters and conspirators alike – to call for a change and investigation of the issue, certainly in the swing state and so close to the fateful election day. In Kaktovik, life went on as usual. Some residents were frustrated by the situation, but focused on a more pressing matter: the opening of the whaling season.
The closed polling station in Kaktovik is just one example of many of the voting challenges facing residents of Alaska Native villages, more than 200 remote communities scattered across the largest state. Many of the villages are far from the main road system, can only be reached by small plane, postal services can be stopped for days due to bad weather or sick days of the workers.
Polling stations also did not open in the August primary election in Wales, in western Alaska along the Bering Strait. They opened significantly late in several other villages. In Anaktobic Pass, the polling station did not open until about 30 minutes before closing; Only seven out of 258 registered voters there managed to vote.
This year, the consequences of giving up the electoral vote could be huge, both in Congress and in Alaska itself – the state’s only representative in the House of Representatives is Democrat Mary Peltola, the first Alaskan native elected to Congress. She is popular among Alaska Native voters, recently won the support of the Federation of Alaska Natives and is in a close battle with Republican challenger Nick Bigich. “Alaska’s seat in Congress will be decided by a vote,” she said at the federation conference earlier this month.
State, regional and local officials all say they are trying to ensure everyone can vote in the Nov. 5 election. In a written statement, Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, called her agency “very invested in staffing all polling stations and opening them on time.” She acknowledged that it can be difficult to find temporary workers to help run elections.
Like other Native populations across the US, Alaska Native voters have faced language barriers at the polls for years. In 2020, the Alaska Division of Elections failed to send a mail-in ballot to the southwestern Alaskan village of Marterbeek in time for the primary election because staff failed to realize there were residents living there.
In June 2022, the primaries for the US House of Representatives were held by mail-in ballot after the sudden death of Republican Congressman Don Young. A number of rural Alaska counties and low-income urban counties have shown particularly high rates of vote disqualification — around 17 percent — mostly due to missing witness signatures on envelopes or other errors that the state provides no means of correcting.
Two months later, polling locations in two southwestern Alaska villages – Tunnak and Atmautluak – did not open in the regular primary and special general election for the House of Representatives, which were held on the same day. Ballot boxes from several other villages arrived too late to be fully counted under the new electoral voting system the state is using in general elections.
“When things like this happen in rural Alaska, out of sight and out of mind, it seems as if the system is indifferent and dismisses it as a flaw of remote Alaskans,” said Michelle Spark, of the nonprofit Voice of the Natives. “We here say that this is unacceptable.”
The land of deer, whales and polar bears
Kaktovik is 1,078 km north of Anchorage, on Barter Island, between the Arctic Ocean and the northern mountain range of Alaska, an area of vast and treeless tundra, almost the size of Oregon. The temperature can drop as low as 20 degrees below minus 29 degrees Celsius under the cover of the eternal darkness of winter. Flights are the only way to access Kaktovik year-round, with delivery ferries delivering goods in the warmer months.
This is the only settlement in the Arctic National Nature Reserve, and the question of whether the next presidential administration will support oil drilling in the reserve – as many residents hope – is a major issue of concern. The nearest settlement is Deadhorse, about 177 km to the west, a supply station for oil companies that marks the end of the gravel road featured in the reality TV show “Ice Road Trucks”.
About 270 residents of Kaktovik, most of them Inuit, live in one-story houses arranged in alleys of about twenty blocks. They subsist by hunting deer and blue whales. The village hunters hunted three blue whales this year.
After the whales are dissected on the nearby beach, the residents pile the bones a short distance away, where polar bears feed on the remains. This has made Kaktovik a popular place for polar bear tourism. The village also has a polar bear patrol, led by Mayor Nathan Gordon Jr., that removes the animals from the village when they get too close.
During the primary election in August, some residents were busy hunting or fishing. The mayor was on vacation with his family in Anchorage. The county also tried to coordinate with the state to ensure the polls were staffed in two other villages, Noixot and Anketobuk Pass. Beecher, director of the elections division, said the state claimed in the late afternoon before the primary election that there were no people to operate the polls in Kakatvik.
The brigade immediately reached out to the village and the district in hopes of finding someone, she said. “Unfortunately, despite best efforts, sometimes skilled staff members are no longer available, requiring the division to obtain and train other employees in a short period of time,” Beecher said.