Alaska Ballot Grace Period at Risk as Supreme Court Weighs Mississippi Case

Alaska's remote geography makes it uniquely vulnerable to a Supreme Court case that could eliminate the state's 10-day grace period for counting ballots received after Election Day. The case stems from Mississippi but could affect thousands of rural Alaskan voters who rely on air transport for mail delivery.

JUNEAU, Alaska — In the remote Alaska Native community of Beaver, approximately 50 residents depend on aircraft to deliver everything from groceries to mail, with flights operating only on weekdays to connect them to the nearest city 40 minutes away.

Aviation serves as a lifeline throughout America’s largest state, where most settlements depend on air transportation for year-round connectivity. Aircraft also serve an essential function during elections, transporting voting materials and completed ballots to and from isolated polling locations like Beaver, while delivering mail-in ballots for thousands of Alaskans—including those in areas where polling places don’t exist.

The enormous distances and remote nature of numerous Alaskan communities create unique circumstances, which is why residents are closely watching Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court arguments with considerable concern.

Local officials fear that a Mississippi lawsuit questioning whether ballots arriving after Election Day should count in federal races might eliminate Alaska’s current policy of accepting delayed ballots. The state currently tallies ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive within 10 days, extending to 15 days for overseas military voters during general elections.

“These processes have been in place for a long time just to ensure that our ballots are counted,” said Rhonda Pitka, a poll worker and first chief in Beaver, which sits along the Yukon River 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Fairbanks.

Should the court mandate that all states receive ballots by Election Day, she explained, “They’ll be disenfranchising thousands of people — thousands of people in these rural communities. It’s just basically saying that their votes don’t count, and that’s a real shame.”

According to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Voting Rights Lab, Alaska joins 13 other states in permitting all mailed ballots with Election Day postmarks to be counted when they arrive days or weeks afterward. Another 15 states offer similar extensions exclusively for military and overseas ballots.

However, Alaska’s terrain, climate conditions, and vast spaces between settlements—the state covers more than double the area of Texas, the country’s second-largest state—create higher stakes for voters. The state’s distinctive vote-counting method also makes the grace period crucial, according to advocates.

Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system for general elections requires workers in remote rural precincts to phone in voters’ initial preferences to regional election headquarters. Nevertheless, all physical ballots must eventually be transported by air to the state Division of Elections in Juneau, the capital, where races without clear winners undergo final tabulation.

Despite Alaska’s existing 10-day extension, some village ballots in 2022 went uncounted due to postal delays. These ballots reached Juneau too late for tabulation, arriving 15 days post-Election Day.

Should the Supreme Court determine that ballots arriving at election offices after Election Day cannot be counted, numerous Alaska voters could lose their voice. Approximately 50,000 Alaskans cast mail-in ballots during the 2024 presidential race.

“I think there’s probably no other state where this ruling could have a more detrimental impact than ours,” Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski said in an interview.

Murkowski interprets the case—a Republican National Committee challenge to Mississippi’s late-ballot acceptance policy—as an attempt to eliminate mail-in voting across the nation.

The RNC contends that such extensions illegally prolong federal elections, while Mississippi counters that no voting happens after Election Day—only the transport and counting of ballots already completed.

The Supreme Court hearing coincides with Senate debate over President Donald Trump-backed legislation requiring citizenship proof for voter registration and photo identification for ballot casting.

Combined, Murkowski believes these initiatives could discourage voter participation.

“I think we’re seeing a level of voter intimidation, I’ll just say it,” she said. “I feel very, very strongly that the effort that we should be making at the federal level is to do all that we can to make our elections accessible, fair and transparent for every lawful voter out there.”

Alaska’s remaining congressional representatives, Rep. Nick Begich and Sen. Dan Sullivan, both Trump-supporting Republicans seeking reelection, back the SAVE America Act currently before the Senate. However, they also emphasized ensuring that ballots properly submitted on or before Election Day receive counting.

“We’ll see what the courts choose to do on that issue, but I do think that we need to allow for time for ballots to come in from the rural parts of our state,” Begich said during a recent visit to Juneau.

A court document filed in the Mississippi case by Alaska Attorney General Stephen Cox and Solicitor General Jenna Lorence remained neutral but detailed geographic and logistical obstacles to conducting Alaska elections.

In Atqasuk, located on Alaska’s North Slope, poll workers tallied votes on election night in 2024, results they typically would report by telephone to election division officials. However, the filing noted they couldn’t establish contact and “chose what they saw as the next best solution — they placed the ballots and tally sheets into a secure package and mailed them to the Division, who did not receive them until nine days later.”

The document requests Supreme Court clarification, especially regarding the definition of ballots being received by Election Day.

While ballot casting timing is clear, “when certain ballots are actually ‘received’ is open to different interpretations, especially given the connectivity challenges for Alaska’s far-flung boroughs,” Cox and Lorence wrote.

Attorneys from the Native American Rights Fund and Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center argued in court filings that restricted postal service in rural regions means some ballots might not receive postmarks until reaching Anchorage or Juneau, a process requiring several days.

During the 2022 general election, between 55% and 78% of absentee ballots from state House districts stretching from the Aleutian Islands along the western coast to the expansive North Slope reached election offices after Election Day, they documented. Across the entire state, roughly 20% of all absentee ballots in that election arrived post-Election Day.

Mandating Election Day ballot receipt, they cautioned, would “disproportionately disenfranchise” Alaska Native voters. The attorneys represent the National Congress of American Indians, Native Vote Washington and the Alaska Federation of Natives.

Michelle Sparck, director of Get Out the Native Vote, a nonpartisan voting rights advocacy organization affiliated with the Alaska Federation of Natives, expresses concern about generating voter confusion and anxiety.

She views the Supreme Court case and the Republican SAVE Act as “a multipronged attempt to take control or wrest control of elections away from states.” Alaska, she noted, already presents sufficient natural obstacles for many voters.

“There is a minute record of election fraud — not at the rate that requires this heavy-handed response through the legislature and the Supreme Court,” she said.