Unofficial results from the Division of Elections early last week showed one Southeast Alaska precinct seemed to overwhelmingly choose a peculiar candidate for the U.S. House — a man currently imprisoned in New York.
Those results confused voters from the communities, who said that didn’t line up with how they voted.
Pelican resident Patricia Phillips tuned in to the radio Thursday morning to catch up on the news, she said something caught her ear.
“It said that there were zero votes for Mary Peltola in Pelican, Elfin Cove. And I went, ‘That’s strange,” she said.
She said she thought the news report she heard couldn’t be right.
“I know for sure there were two votes for Mary Peltola. I came into the city office on Election Day and I voted,” she said.
Phillips said her husband also voted for Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola. Phillips has lived in Pelican for 50 years and went for Peltola in the last two elections. And she wasn’t sure why early reports showed that Democratic candidate Eric Hafner had more than half of the vote in her precinct.
She didn’t even know who he was.
“I saw the results and I was wondering that maybe there was some sort of a clerical error that they put him down for that person instead of for Mary,” she said.
Pelican and Elfin Cove are home to about 122 year-round residents combined, according to census data. The pair of communities share a single precinct for general elections at Pelican’s City Hall.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Division of Elections data showed that 40 ballots had been counted for the 156 registered voters in the area. The results showed that the area had swayed heavily in favor of Hafner for U.S. House – and that no one voted for Peltola.
But, that wasn’t the full picture. By Thursday afternoon, the vote tally changed.
Elections Director Carol Beecher said Friday morning that the results her division initially reported were incorrect and the error happened at the Juneau director’s office during input. The count was corrected Thursday to reflect the actual vote tally.
The incorrect data the state and news outlets reported on Wednesday was astonishing for a few reasons. At that time, Peltola had more than 50% of the vote for the precincts surrounding Pelican and Elfin Cove – Sitka, Tenakee Springs and Hoonah.
Hafner on the other hand, received less than 3% of those votes. Across the state, he had only about 1%.
Hafner is one of three candidates running to unseat Peltola. He also happens to be serving a decades-long sentence in a prison in New York for threatening public officials. When KRBD’s Jack Darrell interviewed him earlier this year, Hafner said he’s never been here.
“I think I have a very good reason right now that I simply can’t come to Alaska,” he said.
A Thursday afternoon update on the Division of Elections website showed that no one had voted for him after all. The Division of Elections changed his 24 votes to zero on the state’s interactive voter website and reported that Peltola led the race instead.
Hafner being on the ballot was a concern for the Alaska Democratic Party. They argued his presence could lead to voter confusion. It even sparked a lawsuit earlier this year that challenged his eligibility. The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed his candidacy in September.
In Alaska, vote counts are slow — by Friday morning, four Alaska precincts still hadn’t reported their results. Statewide, results won’t be certified until Nov. 30.
