Alaska voters head to the polls with bad weather delaying voting in 2 remote communities

Early-morning Election Day voters in Anchorage had to contend with high winds and downed power poles Tuesday that caused an outage slowing Midtown traffic.

One Anchorage polling place, at Tudor Elementary School, was briefly impacted by the power outage. The high wind warning for Anchorage ended at noon.

Michaela Thompson, the operations manager for the state Division of Elections, said all polling places were open across the state early this afternoon except in two remote communities: St. George in the Pribilof Islands and Wales near Nome were closed due to weather-related issues.

“St. George is in the middle of a windstorm and will try to open at 2 p.m. today,” Thompson said. “We have a team to work at Wales, but they are waiting for the weather to allow travel.”

There are 63 registered voters in Wales and 31 in St. George.

In Anchorage, Alaska Public Media reporters saw early lines at polling places ranging from a dozen people to 50 waiting to vote soon after polls opened at 7 a.m. But lines became shorter by midday.

Across the state, there was a steady turnout at many polling places, from Kodiak to the Aleutians to Nome to the Kenai Peninsula. Homer City Hall saw a “steady trickle of people” during the day, while an Unalaska election worker reported more than 100 voters showing up by 10 a.m., describing it as a good turnout. In Nome, voters were coming and going in waves from Old St. Joe’s Church.

Meanwhile in Anchorage, the power outage reported at 7 a.m. by Chugach Electric affected about 3,100 members. Power was restored in about an hour. The Old Seward Highway remained closed as of about 1 p.m. between Sylvan Drive and Dowling Road as the utility responded to the downed poles.

KBBI’s Jamie Diep, KNOM’s Ben Townsend, KUCB’s Sofia Stuart-Rasi, KMXT’s Brian Venua and KDLL’s Hunter Morrison contributed to this report.