The Alaska Division of Elections will recount a Wasilla state House race in which the winning candidate prevailed by just 12 votes after ranked choice tabulation.
Official results certified on Saturday have real estate agent Elexie Moore defeating former Wasilla City Council member Steve Menard with 50.1% of the vote after second-choice votes were accounted for. The winner will replace outgoing Republican Rep. Jesse Sumner, who did not seek reelection.
Moore led Menard by 134 votes in the first round of the all-Republican contest, but Menard nearly made up the difference in second-choice votes after third-place candidate Jessica Wright was eliminated.
Some 9,331 ballots were cast in House District 28, though only 7,800 voters made a selection in the House race.
Menard requested the recount on Thursday, the last day to file a request for a recount under state law. He said it’s possible, though not likely, that he may make up enough ground to flip the result after election officials take a closer look at ambiguously marked ballots. Menard said he’s planning to fly to Juneau to watch the recount.
“I just think we're just doing our due diligence to make sure that every vote is counted and the people's voices are heard,” Menard said by phone.
Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said by email that the recount is scheduled to begin Monday and will be conducted concurrently with the ongoing recount of a narrowly rejected ballot measure that would have repealed ranked choice voting and open primaries. Menard said he’s expecting the single-district recount to take just a day.
The state will pay for the recount because of the close margin. State law requires the Division of Elections to cover the cost in races decided by less than half a percentage point or fewer than 20 votes.
The Division of Elections has 10 days to complete the recount.
