A reader poll at Must Read Alaska reveals that 97% of over 600 participants believe the Alaska Division of Elections should release the raw data from the Nov. 5 election, rather than sit on that data and not release it until after the ranked-choice calculation is completed by the computers later this month.
Due to Alaska’s complicated voting system, some races in Alaska cannot be called because the computers at the State election office must perform the extra step of reassigning second- and third-choice votes. The entire nation is now waiting on Alaska to complete the congressional race, for example, since neither candidate Nick Begich nor incumbent Mary Peltola reached the 50% + 1 vote threshold to win.
But the Division of Elections has the existing, already counted second- and third-place votes in hand and those data files are being kept secret from the campaigns and the public.
Must Read Alaska has filed a public records request with the division to release the data that it has, since this is public information and there is no legal reason to not provide it.