Midterms: Ballots continue to be counted, Peltola in the lead for senate

Over week after election day Alaska is still waiting for final results as absentee and questioned ballots continue to be counted.
As of press time on Tuesday, in the senate race, Mary Peltola sits at 49 percent and has a 1.1 percent, or 2,517 vote, lead over incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan with 47.2 percent, of the first-choice votes.
For the gubernatorial race Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, also known as JKT, is ahead with 49.9 percent of the vote and the closest candidate, Republican Bernadette Wilson is coming in with only 28.8 percent. Bronson trails with 14 percent of first-choice votes. In House District 39, 60.9 percent of voters ranked JKT first.
In the race for U.S. House of Representatives, incumbent Nick Begich, a Republican, has 48.9 percent of the vote, ahead of independent candidate Bill Hill who has 41 percent of first-choice voters. In House District 39 52.3 percent of voters ranked Hill first.
More ballots are still coming in and being counted through the end of the week. If neither candidate has over 50 percent of the vote the race will be decided by ranked choice tabulation, which the Division of Elections is scheduled to begin on Nov. 18.
In House District 39, which includes Nome, Norton Sound and the Bering Strait region, Peltola received 73 percent of the vote.

Ballot measures
Ballot Measure 2, an attempt to do away with ranked-choice voting, shows in unofficial results that it failed, at 52.6 percent voting it down, and 47.4 percent supporting it.
Ballot Measure 3, an act to specify that only U.S. citizens and meet other requirements can vote. The measure succeeded with 69.1 percent of the vote, compared to 30.9 percent who voted ‘no.’

State House
Incumbent State House Rep. Neal Foster (D) is ahead with 48.5 percent of the first-choice vote and holds a 460-vote lead over Tyler Ivanoff who has 35.1percent of the first-choice vote. Ivanoff and Papa Joe Okitkun, both nonpartisan candidates, ran their campaigns urging voters to rank them one or two, interchangeably.
Foster said in an email to the Nugget he appreciates everyone who voted and also his competitors Ivanoff and Okitkun.
“I think we all share the same goals including helping rural Alaskans to cope with the rising costs of food and fuel, and I intend to use my seniority as well as my seat on House Finance to fight for these goals,” Foster wrote.

Get out the vote
Kawerak put out an incentive for high voter turnout offering $2,500 to the community (not including Nome) with the highest turnout. Communities with voter turnout over 50 percent were entered to win $2,500.
The unofficial vote counts show Elim had the highest voter turnout on election day at 61 percent but Kawerak is waiting until all mail-in and question ballots are counted to post competition results.

What’s next
Alaska law mandates a 15-day period after election day to make sure all absentee, early and mail-in ballots are included in the final count. November 18 marks the final deadline to receive mail ballots from overseas and a final regional count of absentee and questioned ballots. It also marks the fifteenth day after the election day and final tabulation results will be done. The next day, Nov. 19, the State Review Board will begin their review and the target date to certify the election is November 25.
The new governor and lieutenant governor will be sworn in on December 7 at noon, the first Monday in December.