A recount is underway in Juneau on the closely contested ballot measure that would have repealed Alaska’s open primaries and ranked choice voting. The recount began Wednesday.
Official results certified on Saturday have Ballot Measure 2 failing by 737 votes, just about two tenths of one percent of all votes cast. The Alaska Republican Party requested the recount, which is being performed at the state’s expense since the final margin was less than half a percentage point.
During the recount, Division of Elections employees will rescan the more than 340,000 votes cast across the state. Roughly 45,000 were scanned by 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, said division director Carol Beecher.
"We take the ballots out of the different envelopes, each scanner is programmed a certain way, and we start scanning all of the ballots, and then they go onto a server, and then from the server, they're fed into these computers that we have in the what we're calling the adjudication room," Beecher said in an interview.
In the adjudication room, big-screen TVs display scans of ballots that might be ambiguous.
The observers, including lawyers for the Republican Party and the No On 2 campaign, then have the opportunity to challenge Beecher’s ruling. Those ballot images are flagged and set aside for possible court challenges.
The ballots that are adjudicated are themselves a small fraction of the overall total, and Beecher says the challenged ballots are an even smaller slice of that sum.
"There are very few that are challenged. It's usually something where the person has marked both ovals and has done some kind of a mark on it, and then we've tried to discern what the intent of the voter was," Beecher said. "Did they want that one to count because they extra-marked it or didn't want to? Sometimes they initial it. Sometimes they say no. It’s a variety."
Advocates both for and against the ballot measure watching the recount said that while it's early in the process, they have not yet seen significant differences that might change the final result.
The state has 10 days to complete the recount, though Beecher says they hope to finish sooner. Until then, election officials will continue scanning ballots 12 hours a day, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
