With a few candidates up and down the ticket unsure whether they won or lost, a lot of Alaskans are looking to the thousands of ballots that remain uncounted. Division of Elections chief Gail Fenumiai says it’s too early to say exactly how many ballots are outstanding. “Right now we have, in the offices within the state, 23,608 absentee and early votes that are eligible to be counted,” said at mid-day today. They are from voters who live throughout the state, not in any particular district. “The majority of them are from non-rural areas of the state, meaning Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, the Mat-Su area,” she said. Those are, if you will, the known unknowns. But there are thousands of other kinds of ballots to be added to the total. It’s not clear how many are in these other categories.
For starters, Fenumiai is expecting thousands of questioned ballots. Four years ago there were 13,000, so that’s her ballpark figure. Also, almost 14,000 absentee ballots were sent to voters but not yet returned. Some of those are still arriving by mail. Plus, this year Alaska had more than 200 absentee in-person voting locations across the state.
“And those ballots, we still have some of those who will still be coming back in that were probably voted within the last five to six days,” she said.
She won’t have a count of those until they actually arrive, but she says those are likely number in the thousands, too.
Full Article: Knowns and Unknowns Among Uncounted Ballots | Alaska Public Media.