What's up with Alaska?

[Reter]

Why is it taking so long for the results to come in?

[TroyD]

1. Remote areas

Harder to count the remote areas, apparently.

But the vote is coming in slowly in lots of states actually.

The counting has been going slowly in Virginia, Colorado & New Hampshire, as well as Connecticut, which is why it has taken so long for Warner, Hickenlooper and Malloy to be elected, and for Brown to finally realize that Shaheen won.

And California seems to only be at 60% in, although Brown won by a 60-40 margin, so the result was known a long time ago (although there are some House races in question).

[Travelman]

4. This.

The distance from the Aleutians to Barrow is farther than the distance from New York to L.A., and there are a whole lot of people out there who live a practically nomadic life: no internet access to speak of, and often no electricity from any sort of established source other than a Honda generator.

Voting in Alaska is not at all like voting at the 22nd precinct in Cleveland or wherever. Ballots are often literally flown by bush plane from some tiny village of twelve people into Juneau for manual tabulation. You don't just hit "enter" to send the votes out there.

[Filibuster Harry]

2. In this day and age of electronics I was shocked to still see at 1 am that all Connecticut votes

had not been tallied. Stayed up to 1:30 and up this morning at 6 and still no winner for Governor. Very, very happy Malloy was re-elected.

[Reter]

3. I just checked, it say 100.00% reporting

So apparently they are waiting on absentees to come it. Right now it's:

Dan Sullivan 48.96%
Republican 110,203

Mark Begich 45.34%
Democrat 102,054

Realistically, is there any way this can be made up?

[Blue_In_AK]

8. Yes, see my post below.

If the absentee votes are coming from rural Alaska they will strongly favor Begich.

[Recursion]

5. Juneau doesn't have any roads coming into it, as an example

It's only accessible to the rest of the state by boat or plane, and it's the state capital.

[Reter]

6. OK, I get that why it takes so much longer in Alaska now

My next questions are when will we find out, and is there any way we realistically win this?

[Blue_In_AK]

9. Two weeks, and, yes, we can win,

although it's an uphill climb. Sullivan's lead should shrink considerably or be entirely eliminated if past elections are any indication.

[Blue_In_AK]

7. Big state, lots of remote precincts,

Many, many absentee and early voters. Mark Begich has vowed not to concede until all votes are counted. Here's the latest from Alaska Dispatch:


http://www.adn.com/article/20141107/number-uncounted-votes-grows-alaska-us-senate-race

The number of uncounted votes in Alaska’s tightly fought U.S. Senate race grew by 21,000 between Wednesday and Friday -- and more than 5,000 of those were votes that hadn’t been predicted in early accounts of the number of ballots outstanding.

After election night on Tuesday, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich trailed Republican challenger Dan Sullivan by 8,000 votes, or 3.6 percent, and both campaigns have been closely watching as state elections officials collect additional ballots cast by mail, or at more than 200 so-called “absentee in-person voting locations” around the state, where people could vote early.

More than 40,000 ballots will likely be counted starting Tuesday, though the number will probably climb even more before then. To win, Begich would have to reverse election night trends and win a substantial majority -- though his allies have pointed out that in the count following Election Day in 2008, Begich overcame a 3,000 vote deficit to Republican Ted Stevens and ultimately won by 4,000 votes.

The spike between Wednesday and Friday was a reflection of state elections officials’ new accounting for more than 13,000 provisional ballots, 2,200 absentee ballots submitted by fax, mail or email, and some 5,200 ballots cast early at the in-person absentee voting locations across the state.

<snip>

The reason that many of the absentee votes aren't counted immediately is because state elections officials need to check them against registers used at individual precincts on Election Day, to ensure that people didn't try to vote twice.

Shannyn Moore also has good analysis of our election here:

http://www.adn.com/article/20141109/bottom-line-election-results-alaskans-want-less-ideology-more-work