KAKTOVIK, Alaska (AP) — Early last summer, George Kaleak, a whaling captain from the small Native village of Kaktovik, Alaska, on an island in the Arctic Ocean just off the state’s northern coast , pinned a flyer to the blue, ribbon-edged sign. notice board in the community center.

“Attention residents,” we could read. “Seeking a chairman of elections to conduct the August and November elections. …If interested, please contact Alaska State Nome Elections.

No one was interested, Kaleak said, and the state did not provide an election supervisor or election staff.

When the primaries arrived on August 20, the Kaktovik polling station did not open its doors. The village’s 189 registered voters had nowhere to vote. Kaleak, who is also an advisor to the regional government, didn’t even try.

“I knew there was no one to open it,” he said in an interview in Kaktovik earlier this month.

The development could have shocked voters or politicians elsewhere in the United States, particularly in key states where any irregularity in polling draws scrutiny from party activists and news organizations, with conspiracy theories swirling. spread on social networks and calls for investigations.

In Kaktovik, life continued. Some locals were frustrated, but they turned their attention to a more pressing matter: the start of whaling season.

Remote villages, few electoral agents

The closed polling place represents just the latest example of ongoing voting challenges in Alaska’s remote Native villages, a collection of more than 200 isolated communities that dot the nation’s largest state. Many villages are far from the main road network, so isolated that they are only accessible by small plane. Postal service may be interrupted for several days due to extreme weather conditions or worker illness.

Polling stations also did not open for the August primary in Wales, in far western Alaska along the Bering Strait. They opened late in several other villages. At Anaktuvuk Pass, the polling station only opened about 30 minutes before closing time; only seven of 258 registered voters cast ballots in person.

This year, with control of Congress at stake, the implications of any repeat problems in the November general election could be enormous. The state’s only representative in the House is Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, the first Alaska native to serve in Congress. She is popular among Alaska Native voters, recently won the support of the Alaska Federation of Natives and is leading a tight re-election fight against Republican Nick Begich.

“This congressional seat will be won by dozens of votes,” Peltola said at a federation convention 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 “heavily invested in ensuring all precincts have workers and sites open on time.” She acknowledged that it can be difficult to find temporary workers to help run elections.

“Out of sight and out of mind”

Like other indigenous populations in the United States, Alaska Native voters have for years faced language barriers in elections. In 2020, the State Division of Elections failed to send absentee ballots to the southwest Alaska village of Mertarvik in time for the primary election because its staff did not Didn’t realize anyone lived there.

In June 2022, a special primary for the United States House of Representatives was held primarily by mail following the sudden death of Republican U.S. Representative Don Young. Some rural Alaska areas and low-income urban districts have had particularly high rates of rejected ballots – about 17% – largely due to missing witness signatures on envelopes or other errors that the state doesn’t provide any way to fix.

Two months later, precincts in two southwest Alaska villages – Tununak and Atmautluak – did not open for primary and special general elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, which took place place the same day. Ballots from several other villages arrived too late to be fully tabulated under the new ranked-choice voting system used by the state for the general election.

“When these things happen in rural Alaska, when they’re out of sight and out of mind, it seems like the system shrugs its shoulders and dismisses them as a character flaw of remote Alaskans,” he said. said Michelle Spark of the nonprofit Get Out The Native. Vote. “And we are saying here that this is unacceptable.”

Alaska allows mail-in voting, but that can present its own challenges, given the sometimes questionable reliability of mail delivery in rural Alaska.

The Alaska Federation of Natives, the largest Native organization in the state of Alaska, passed a resolution last year raising concerns about the postal service. She asks residents about their postal service, including how it affects their ability to vote or obtain medication.

A land of caribou, whales and polar bears

Kaktovik is 1,078 km north of Anchorage, on Barter Island, between the Arctic Ocean and Alaska’s North Slope, a vast area of ​​treeless tundra almost the size of Oregon. Temperatures can drop as low as 20 below zero F (29 below C) during the perpetual darkness of winter. Air transport provides the only year-round access to Kaktovik, with ocean barges delivering goods during the warmer months.

It’s the only community in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and whether the next presidential administration will support oil drilling in the refuge — as many villagers hope — is a major concern. The nearest settlement is Deadhorse, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) to the west, the oil company supply stop that marks the end of the gravel road featured on the reality TV show “Ice Road Truckers.” .

Kaktovik’s approximately 270 residents, most of them Inupiat, live in one-story homes arranged in a grid of about 20 blocks. They survive by hunting caribou and bowhead whales; the village’s whalers landed three bowhead whales this year.

After butchering the whales on a nearby beach, villagers pile up the bones further away, where polar bears feast on the remains. This has made Kaktovik a popular location for polar bear tourism. The village also has a polar bear patrol, led by village mayor Nathan Gordon Jr., to chase the animals out of town when they come too close.

During the August primary, some residents went hunting or fishing. The mayor was vacationing with his family in Anchorage.

Many obstacles to staffing polling stations

Madeline Gordon, a former election worker, had taken a new job at a village grocery store. Gordon, the mayor’s cousin, said she told the state Division of Elections Nome’s office earlier this summer that she would not be able to hold the primary election, but that the The state nevertheless sent a box of ballots to his home.

She handed the box to a municipal clerk, Tiffani Kayotuk. A state official told Kayotuk to keep it until further notice, Kayotuk said. The box was still in her office when she went on maternity leave on the day of the primary.

It was clear long before that Kaktovik would need help organizing the primaries.

Kaleak, deputy chief executive officer of the North Slope Regional District – the equivalent of county government in other states – posted the flyer asking for help running the election on the board. community center display. It still hung there recently, near one for the volunteer fire department and another for the local fuel depot. He also posted notices on a community Facebook page.

But the position required a trip to Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, for training. And, Kaleak said, the pay — $20.50 an hour — wasn’t enough to be attractive in a village where gasoline costs $7.50 a gallon and other goods shipped long distances distances are just as expensive. Small pumpkins were $80 each this month.

Taylor Thompson, who heads the North Slope borough’s legal department, said a borough official contacted the state Division of Elections before the August primary to see if they anticipated any problems and had offered to send a member of borough staff to the village if necessary.

“The state just didn’t accept us,” Thompson said.

She said she “lost her mind” when she learned from a press article that the Kaktovik police station had not opened its doors. This time, the district sent a worker to Kaktovik to ensure the district was open for the general elections.

“We’re going to make sure there’s someone there no matter what if the state doesn’t meet its obligations,” Thompson said.

Determined to ensure voters are no longer disenfranchised

The district was also trying to coordinate with the state to ensure polling places will be staffed in two other villages, Nuiqsut and Anaktuvuk Pass.

Beecher, the elections division director, said the state was informed late the afternoon before the primary that Kaktovik had no one to run the election. The division immediately contacted the village and borough in hopes of finding someone, she said.

“Unfortunately, despite best efforts, sometimes trained personnel are no longer available, requiring the division to recruit additional workers and train them in a short period of time,” Beecher said.

The mayor said he had a sympathetic ear when he returned from vacation.

“I end up coming back and hearing how the primaries weren’t open and how people had to miss their very first election,” Gordon Jr. said.

Charles Lampe, president of Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. and member of the city council, is in favor of municipal officials being trained to manage elections. That way, he said, “nothing like this will happen again.”

For Kaleak, the disenfranchisement of Alaska Native voters should spark as much outrage as the disenfranchisement of voters anywhere else in the country.

“Every person should be able to vote, and it should count and it should be fair,” he said.

By MARK THIESSEN, BECKY BOHRER and GENE JOHNSON Associated Press. Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska. Johnson reported from Seattle.