TALKING POINTS | OCTOBER 21, 2026

It’s the mail, the map and close races, not ranked ballots.

• It’s not the instant runoff. It’s the mail. Alaska counts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive up to 10 days later (15 from overseas), so voters in remote communities reached only by plane or boat aren’t shut out. Gov. Dunleavy vetoed SB 64, a bipartisan bill to speed the count.

• Close races in Alaska always waited, long before ranked ballots. Days from Election Day until the AP called the race:

• Close races take time everywhere. We rarely notice, because most U.S. races aren’t close in November: about 87% of 2024 U.S. House races were effectively decided in the primary (Unite America). Alaska’s general elections are genuinely competitive. That’s the point of its system.

• Counting the rounds takes minutes. Once every ballot is in, the Division of Elections runs the instant-runoff tally on a public livestream, about a minute per race.

• It’s all transparent. The cast vote record is the anonymous, ballot-by-ballot record of rankings, with no names or voter information. Once it’s public, anyone can run the rounds with free software and check the result. In 2024 the Division released preliminary records during the count, and Decision Desk HQ called the U.S. House race four days before the official tally.

• The repeal measure waits too. Ballot Measure 2 is a simple yes-or-no count, with no ranking at all, and it will wait for the same deadlines. In 2024 the repeal question wasn’t settled until the final count.

More: “Final Five Without the Wait” and political-innovation.org. Contact: Katherine Gehl, founder, IPI.