Alaska Division of Elections director Gail Fenumiai tells Battle ’10 how Alaska will count write-in votes. “Write-in votes will be counted and reported as a group total Write-Ins,” she wrote in an e-mail. “If after counting all absentee and questioned ballots write-in votes is the highest for that race, then the individual votes will be counted OR if write-in votes is second and the difference of votes cast between first and second is less than .5%.”
As of October 31, 15,899 mail-in ballots have been returned (out of 30,017 sent), and 416 by-fax ballots (out of 1,244) have been returned. 6,346 people had cast their absentee in-person ballots. As of November 1, there had been 12,306 early votes cast.
All of these will be part of tonight’s count. “We plan to post our first election results at 9pm and then every 15-20 minutes thereafter with precinct by precinct results available at the end of the evening — most likely very early in the morning,” says Fenumiai.