There’s a scenario where the balance of power in the Senate hinges on whether Democrat Mary Peltola or Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan won a close Alaska Senate race. If that happens, the country could find itself waiting.
And waiting. And waiting.
Alaska election officials will have 15 days to count ballots after Election Day because the state accepts absentee ballots later than most: They can be postmarked, rather than received, by Election Day. Normally, though, all of Washington isn’t as absorbed in the results of the far-off state as they have been during this midterm season.
President Donald Trump is questioning the integrity of the race. The Justice Department is suing election officials over a candidate with the same name as the Republican incumbent. And the Republican governor of the state has ordered an investigation after The New York Times published a report on an effort by Democrats to recruit Daniel J. Sullivan, the other Sullivan on the ballot, to run for office to siphon votes away from the incumbent Sullivan.
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Election experts worry that a lag in results could allow time for conspiracies to spread, and they’re preaching patience.
“Election officials during that time are going to roll up their sleeves and continue just doing their jobs and report the election results out,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit that supports fair elections. “It is going to take a long time to know who won every race, and it may take days to know who controls Congress.”
Alaska election officials plan to certify the results by Nov. 25 — after that, the results go to Alaska’s governor for certification (another problem this year: Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has not committed to certifying the result. His successor — potentially a Democrat — is due to be sworn in on Dec. 7).
The Alaska Division of Elections did not respond to a request for comment.
There’s also another quirk to voting in the state that makes it different from how voting in much of the rest of the country works: ranked-choice voting.
Voters in Alaska will rank the four Senate candidates who advanced from the nonpartisan open primary in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes in the initial round of counting, officials proceed to additional rounds of tabulation. Last-place candidates are eliminated, and the ballots roll over to the voter’s next-preferred candidates until a candidate wins a majority.
Alaskans narrowly approved the ranked-choice voting system through a ballot measure in 2020, though opponents of the system criticized the fact that much of the spending in support of that measure came from out of state.
Scott Kendall, who wrote and litigated the 2020 ballot measure, said it’s a common misconception that Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system is to blame for slow ballot counting. Kendall said the reason why tabulation is so slow is because of Alaska’s late deadline to accept absentee ballots and the state’s sheer size.
“The elections are no more delayed than they would be otherwise,” Kendall said.
“You have to analyze each ballot envelope, make sure it’s a registered voter, make sure they didn’t vote before, check it again,” Kendall said. “It just takes days and days and days.”
There’s an initiative to get rid of the ranked-choice voting system in Alaska on this year’s ballot, with supporters accusing the system of being too complicated. Vice President JD Vance, while leaving a rally on Oct. 29, called ranked-choice voting “confusing.”
“The person who wins the most votes should win,” Vance said. “That seems to be not what happens with ranked-choice voting.”
Kendall, who has worked for Alaska Republicans in the past, said the system mitigates “dirty tricks” because of the roll over to the voter’s next-preferred candidates.
“Sit back, be patient, give the division workers grace because they are overworked, and do not entertain goofy-ass conspiracy theory stuff,” Kendall said. “Just let the results be the results.”
In 2024, the tabulation of votes wasn’t available until Nov. 20, 2024, 15 days after Election Day. The majority of other states require absentee ballots to arrive by Election Day.
Kendall also warned there may be a “partisan skew” to ballots counted later in the process because most of them are mailed in and added that “that doesn’t mean it’s anything illegitimate. It just means those ballots have been received.”
According to an analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Lab, 37% of Democrats voted by mail in 2024 compared to 24% of Republicans. The partisan skew was even more dramatic in 2020: 60% of Democrats compared 32% of Republicans. This year, as trust in the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots on time has dropped, there’s reason to believe that Democrats might rely on vote-by-mail less than in the past — but in a state as vast as Alaska, some have no choice.
While most voters cast their ballots in person, 1 in 7 Alaskans vote by mail, according to U.S. Election Assistance Commission data, especially in more remote areas.
In California, where there are often delays in counting votes because most residents mail in their ballots, election deniers have raised doubt during waiting periods before. That happened in several counties across the state in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
“Lengthy delays in final vote tallies, especially in those, you know, where it matters … where the vote margin is very low, it definitely contributes to doubt,” said Cathy Darling Allen, a Democrat and former election official in Shasta County, California. “It only allows election deniers to amplify … that kind of message.”
She added: “There’s never going to be a time when a local election official has a bigger microphone than the president of the United States.”
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