Election Passes These Precincts By

When three rural Alaska precincts failed to report results after last week’s state primary, workers at election headquarters began to wonder why--and discovered that the polls never opened, officials said Tuesday.

“They just apparently didn’t do anything,” said Linda Edgeworth, state Division of Elections spokeswoman in Juneau. “We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again in November.”

Sometimes it takes several days for votes to be reported from remote areas of Alaska, so officials were unaware that anything was amiss until they realized well after the Aug. 23 election that three precincts had not reported to the Division of Elections.

“Frankly, no one has called about this except you and one other reporter,” Edgeworth told United Press International. “No candidates or voters have called.”

Voters had candidates to consider for the state House and state Senate, and for Alaska’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, officials said. But no one voted in Sheldon Point, Hughes and Ivanof-Perryville.

“The first thing we did,” Edgeworth said, “was to check if every single person had voted the same way, would it have changed the outcome. It wouldn’t have.”

Since no results were affected, and no one complained, the election is not in jeopardy, she said.