KAKTOVIK, Alaska (AP) — Early last summer, George Kaleak, a whaling captain in the tiny Alaska Native village of Kaktovik on an island in the Arctic Ocean just off the state's northern coast, pinned a ribbon-lined flyer to the blue bulletin board in the community center.

“Attention residents,” it said. “Looking for an election officer to conduct the August and November elections. … If interested, please contact the State of Alaska Nome Elections.”

No one is interested, Kaleak said, and the state has failed to provide an election official or poll worker.

When the primary election arrived on August 20, the polling station in Kaktovik was not open. There was no place for the village's 189 registered voters to cast their votes. Kaleak, who is also an advisor to the regional government, didn't even try.

“I knew there was no one there to open it,” he said during an interview in Kaktovik earlier this month.

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The development may have shocked voters and politicians elsewhere in the U.S., particularly in swing states, where any election irregularities are drawing scrutiny from party activists and news organizations, conspiracy theories are spreading on social media and calls for investigations.

Life went on in Kaktovik. Some residents were frustrated but turned their attention to a more pressing matter: the start of the whaling season.

Remote villages, few poll workers

The closed polling station is just the latest example of ongoing voting problems in Alaska's remote Native villages, a collection of more than 200 far-flung communities in the country's largest state. Many of the villages are far from the main road network and are so isolated that they can only be reached by small aircraft. Postal service may be disrupted for days due to severe weather or employee illness.

In Wales, in the far west of Alaska on the Bering Strait, polling stations were also not open for the August primaries. In several other villages they opened late. At Anaktuvuk Pass, the polling station opened about 30 minutes before closing time; Only seven of the 258 voters registered there cast their votes in person.

With control of Congress at stake this year, the impact of repeated problems during the November general election could be enormous. The state's only representative in the House of Representatives is Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola – the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress. She is popular with Alaska Native voters, recently won the endorsement of the Alaska Federation of Natives and is in a tough re-election fight against Republican Nick Begich.

“This congressional seat will be won by dozens of votes,” Peltola said at a federation convention this month.

State, county and local officials all say they are trying to ensure everyone can vote in the Nov. 5 election. In a written statement, Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, called her agency “heavily invested in ensuring all precincts have manpower and sites open on time.” She acknowledged that it can be difficult to find temporary workers to help run elections.

“Out of sight and mind”

Like other indigenous populations in the U.S., Alaska Native voters have faced language barriers in elections for years. In 2020, the state elections department failed to send mail-in ballots to the village of Mertarvik in southwest Alaska in time for the primary election because its staff didn't know anyone lived there.

In June 2022, a special primary election for the U.S. House of Representatives was held primarily by mail following the sudden death of Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young. In some rural areas of Alaska and lower-income urban counties, the rate of invalid ballots was particularly high — about 17% — largely due to missing witness signatures on envelopes or other errors that the state cannot correct.

Two months later, precinct sites in two southwest Alaska villages — Tununak and Atmautluak — were not open for the regular primary and special elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, which took place on the same day. Ballots from several other villages arrived too late to be fully counted in the new ranked-choice voting system the state uses for general elections.

“When something like this happens in rural Alaska, when it's out of sight and out of mind, it seems like the system just shrugs its shoulders and dismisses it as a character flaw of remote Alaskans,” said Michelle Sparck of the nonprofit Get Out The Native Vote . “And we’re saying here that that’s unacceptable.”

Alaska allows mail-in voting, but that can present its own challenges given the sometimes questionable reliability of mail delivery in rural Alaska.

The Alaska Federation of Natives, the largest statewide Native American organization in Alaska, passed a resolution last year raising concerns about the postal service. It asks residents about their postal service, including how it affects their ability to vote or get medication.

A land full of caribou, whales and polar bears

Kaktovik is located 670 miles (1,078 km) north of Anchorage on Barter Island, between the Arctic Ocean and Alaska's North Slope, an area of ​​vast, treeless tundra almost the size of Oregon. During the prolonged darkness of winter, the temperature can drop to 20 below zero F (29 below C). Air travel provides the only year-round access to Kaktovik. In the warmer months, ocean-going ships deliver goods.

It is the only community in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and whether the next presidential administration will support oil drilling in the refuge – as many villagers hope – is a major issue of concern. The nearest settlement is Deadhorse, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) west, the oil company supply stop that marks the end of the gravel road featured in the reality TV show “Ice Road Truckers.”

Kaktovik's approximately 270 residents, mostly Inupiat, live in one-story houses arranged in a grid of about 20 blocks. They live by hunting caribou and bowhead whales; Village whalers have landed three bowhead whales this year.

After slaughtering the whales on a nearby beach, the villagers pile the bones further away, where polar bears feast on the remains. This has made Kaktovik a popular location for polar bear tourism. The village also has a polar bear patrol led by village mayor Nathan Gordon Jr., which chases the animals out of town when they get too close.

During the August primary, some residents were out hunting or fishing. The mayor was on vacation in Anchorage with his family.

Many obstacles to manning polling stations

Madeline Gordon, a former poll worker, had taken a new job at a grocery store in the village. Gordon, the mayor's cousin, said she told the state elections department's Nome office in early summer that she couldn't vote in the primary, but the state still sent a box of ballots to her home.

She gave the box to a city clerk, Tiffani Kayotuk. A state official told Kayotuk to hold on until further notice, Kayotuk said. When she went on maternity leave the day of elementary school, the box was still in her office.

It had been clear long beforehand that Kaktovik would need help running the primaries.

Kaleak, a deputy aide to the top official of the regional North Slope Borough – the equivalent of a county government in other states – posted the flyer on the community center's bulletin board asking for help filling the ballot. It was hanging there recently, next to one for the volunteer fire department and another for the local fuel depot. He also posted messages on a community Facebook page.

However, the position required traveling to Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, for training. And, Kaleak said, the $20.50 an hour wage isn't attractive enough in a village where gasoline costs $7.50 a gallon and other goods transported long distances are similarly expensive. Small pumpkins were $80 each this month.

Taylor Thompson, who heads the North Slope Borough's legal department, said a county official contacted the state elections department before the August primary to find out if they expected any problems and offered to assign a county employee to the village if needed fly.

“The state just didn’t take us up on it,” Thompson said.

She said she “lost her mind” when she learned from a news article that Kaktovik's precinct was not open. This time the district is sending a worker to Kaktovik to ensure that the district is opened for the parliamentary elections.

“We will make sure that no matter what happens if the state fails to meet its obligations, someone will be there,” Thompson said.

We are determined to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised again

The district also sought to coordinate with the state to ensure polling stations were staffed in two other villages, Nuiqsut and Anaktuvuk Pass.

Beecher, the elections department director, said the state was informed late in the afternoon before the primary that Kaktovik had no one to conduct the election. The department immediately reached out to the village and county in hopes of finding someone, she said.

“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, trained personnel are sometimes no longer available, requiring the department to recruit and train other workers within a short period of time,” Beecher said.

The mayor said he received a slap in the face when he returned from vacation.

“I finally come back and find out that the primaries didn’t open and that people had to miss their very first election,” Gordon Jr. said.

Charles Lamp, president of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. and City Council member, supports training city officials to conduct elections. That way, he said, “something like this will never happen again.”

For Kaleak, the disenfranchisement of Alaska Native voters should provoke as much outrage as the disenfranchisement of voters elsewhere in the country.

“Every person should have a voice, and it should count, and it should be fair,” he said.

Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska. Johnson reported from Seattle.

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