Cast a ballot and wait for the plane. In Alaska, a grace period for ballots is seen as a necessity

Alaska’s Remote Villages Face Potential Voting Crisis as Supreme Court Weighs Ballot Deadline Case

In the tiny Alaska Native village of Beaver, roughly 50 residents depend on weekday flights for everything from mail to groceries. Located about 40 minutes by plane from the nearest city, this remote community exemplifies the unique challenges Alaska faces in ensuring all its citizens can participate in elections.

Air service is vital to Alaska’s electoral system, transporting voting materials to rural precincts like Beaver and delivering mail-in ballots for thousands across the state. This critical lifeline for democratic participation now faces uncertainty as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case that could fundamentally alter how votes are counted in America’s largest state.

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a Mississippi case challenging whether ballots received after Election Day can be counted in federal elections. A ruling against the practice could eliminate Alaska’s longstanding policy of accepting ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within 10 days (or 15 days for overseas voters in general elections).

“These processes have been in place for a long time just to ensure that our ballots are counted,” said Rhonda Pitka, a poll worker and first chief in Beaver, which sits along the Yukon River 110 miles north of Fairbanks. “They’ll be disenfranchising thousands of people in these rural communities. It’s just basically saying that their votes don’t count, and that’s a real shame.”

Alaska is one of 14 states allowing all mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive days or weeks later and still be counted. Another 15 states provide grace periods specifically for military and overseas ballots.

What makes Alaska’s situation unique is its vast geography—more than twice the size of Texas—combined with extreme weather conditions and immense distances between communities. The state’s ranked-choice voting system further complicates matters, as workers in small rural precincts call in voters’ first choices to regional election offices, but physical ballots must ultimately be flown to Juneau for final tabulation.

Even with the current 10-day grace period, ballots from some villages in 2022 arrived too late for tabulation, arriving 15 days after Election Day. Approximately 50,000 Alaskans voted by mail in the 2024 presidential primary, all of whom could be affected by the Supreme Court’s decision.

“I think there’s probably no other state where this ruling could have a more detrimental impact than ours,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski in an interview. She sees the case as part of a broader effort to restrict mail-in voting nationwide.

The Republican National Committee argues such grace periods improperly extend elections, while Mississippi counters that no actual voting occurs after Election Day—only the delivery and counting of already completed ballots.

This case comes as the U.S. Senate debates legislation pushed by former President Donald Trump that would require proof-of-citizenship for voter registration and photo ID for casting ballots.

“I think we’re seeing a level of voter intimidation, I’ll just say it,” Murkowski said. “I feel very strongly that the effort we should be making at the federal level is to do all that we can to make our elections accessible, fair and transparent for every lawful voter.”

Alaska’s other congressional members, Rep. Nick Begich and Sen. Dan Sullivan, both Republican allies of Trump seeking reelection, support the SAVE America Act before the Senate but also emphasize that properly cast ballots should be counted. “We need to allow for time for ballots to come in from the rural parts of our state,” Begich noted during a recent visit to Juneau.

Alaska Attorney General Stephen Cox and Solicitor General Jenna Lorence filed court documents highlighting the state’s unique challenges. In one example from 2022, poll workers in Atqasuk on Alaska’s North Slope couldn’t reach election officials by phone and instead mailed ballots and tally sheets, which took nine days to reach officials.

The impact on Alaska Native voters could be particularly severe. Legal filings show that in the 2022 general election, between 55% and 78% of absentee ballots from House districts spanning the Aleutian Islands to the North Slope arrived after Election Day. Statewide, about 20% of all absentee ballots in that election were received after Election Day.

Michelle Sparck, director of Get Out the Native Vote, worries about creating confusion among voters. She views both the Supreme Court case and the proposed SAVE Act as attempts to centralize control of elections. “There is a minute record of election fraud—not at the rate that requires this heavy-handed response through the legislature and the Supreme Court,” she said.

For Alaska’s most isolated communities, the Supreme Court’s decision could determine whether their voices continue to be heard in national elections.