Alaska elections officials plan to debut new ballot-tracking system with Aug. 20 primary

A locator utilized by nan Alaska Division of Elections is seen connected Friday, Aug. 16, 2024 astatine nan division’s offices successful Juneau, Alaska. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)

The Alaska Division of Elections is utilizing a caller instrumentality this twelvemonth successful an effort to debar nan kinds of ballot-counting problems that person occurred during erstwhile elections.

Enclosed successful nan agleam reddish and greenish paperwork bags sent to each distant polling position is simply a small, achromatic search instrumentality that will let workers to trace nan location of each precinct’s ballots arsenic they recreation crossed nan authorities and connected to Juneau for last counting.

That’s an important change, because ballots person occasionally been delayed during their return voyage done nan mail, causing elections officials to postpone certification.

Two years ago, ballots from 7 agrarian precincts were truthful severely delayed during nan typical predetermination to switch Rep. Don Young that they couldn’t beryllium included successful nan 2nd and 3rd counts successful nan state’s first-ever classed prime election.

“We’re hoping that pinch these search tags that we person successful there, we tin spot if it’s an rumor of nan precinct workers not mailing it soon enough, aliases if it is sitting successful 1 of nan station offices,” said Carol Beecher, head of nan Alaska Division of Elections.

“If we are capable to find that it’s sitting successful a station office, past nan station agency has been moving intimately pinch us. We meet pinch them regularly, and we would beryllium capable to way that down a batch quicker,” she said.

Ahead of nan state’s Aug. 20 superior election, nan trackers were included successful packages sent to each 131 polling stations wherever ballots are still counted by manus connected Election Day. The authorities has 402 polling stations altogether.

The trackers are based connected cellphone service, truthful they don’t usability successful each parts of Alaska, but they’re a measurement supra what was antecedently available.

Elections officials said nan thought for nan trackers came from Apple’s AirTag system, but Apple has a limit of 16 AirTags per personification ID, which wasn’t workable, predetermination workers said.

That meant searching for a different commercialized provider. The testing process wasn’t vanished successful clip for nan 2022 election, which delayed implementation until this year.