If we want to see increased voter participation from Alaska Native people, we need systems and choices that reflect our values and priorities.
Updated: 18 minutes agoBallot envelopes from the special primary election for Alaska's lone U.S. House seat are prepared to be opened at the State Division of Elections Region II office in Anchorage on Monday, June 13, 2022. in tandem with an instant runoff general election. Alaska also happens to have the largest proportion of Native peoples in the nation, followed by Oklahoma and New Mexico.
There is no way to access records of individual Alaska Native voting behavior at the statewide level. But because there is a distinct group of predominantly Alaska Native communities in rural Alaska, we were able to compare the voter behavior in these communities to voter behavior in communities across the rest of the state. You can see our full report here.
Despite challenges with the vote-by-mail format introduced by the special election —with some rural districts posting a 16% rejection rate, four times that of the statewide average— two Alaska Natives nevertheless ranked in the top 5 vote getters! Rural voters then prepared for their first open primary and their first experience of ranked choice voting in the special general election.
Rural priorities are not always best reflected by one party or the other. That’s one reason why Alaska Natives living in rural parts of the state may consistently choose to vote across party lines. It’s why election turnout in predominantly Alaska Native communities surged to incredible levels, at a rate of 70.6 percent when subsistence was on the ballot in 1982.
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