Early voting opens for Aug. 20 primary; mailed absentee application window closes this week

An early voting station is set up in the atrium of the State Office Building in Juneau, Alaska on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, the first day of early voting for the 2024 Alaska primary election. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)

Early voting for Alaska’s Aug. 20 primary election opened Monday at polling stations across the state.

Locations will be open in a variety of places through Aug. 19.

The Alaska Division of Elections is also accepting applications for mailed absentee ballots through Aug. 10.

If a voter wants to download and print out an absentee ballot, the deadline to apply for that procedure is Aug. 19.

Either kind of ballot must be postmarked before or on Election Day. Because most Alaska mail is postmarked in Juneau or Anchorage, ballots cast within 10 days of Election Day should be hand-postmarked at a local post office.

Ballots must reach the Alaska Division of Elections no later than 10 days after Election Day in order to be counted.

If you haven’t registered to vote, it’s too late to participate in the primary — the deadline was July 21. You can still register for the November general election; the deadline for that is Oct. 6.

Under Alaska’s primary election system, all candidates for a particular office run together. A voter picks one of those candidates to advance. The top four vote-getters for the office, regardless of political party, advance to the November election.

In any race with four or fewer candidates, all candidates advance to November. In 2022, some candidates withdrew from the general election after viewing the primary results.

This year, three races have more than four candidates — the U.S. House race , the election for Eagle River’s state Senate seat , and the vote for the state House seat covering Tok, Delta Junction and most of Interior Alaska.

Primary elections for the presidency are the responsibility of individual political parties, and those have already taken place, so no presidential candidates appear on the Aug. 20 ballot.

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