The ability to vote is not always guaranteed in remote Alaska Native villages.

When the primary election took place on August 20, the Kaktovik polling station was not open. The village’s 189 registered voters had nowhere to vote. Kaleak, who is also an adviser to the regional government, didn’t even try.

“I knew there was no one to open it,” he said during an interview at Kaktovik earlier this month.

The development could shock voters and politicians in other parts of the U.S., especially in swing states where any election irregularities have drawn scrutiny from partisan activists and news organizations, with conspiracy theories spreading on social media and calls for investigations.

Life went on in Kaktovik. Some residents were upset, but turned their attention to a more pressing issue: the start of the whaling season.

The closed polling place is just the latest example of persistent voting problems in remote Alaska Native villages, a collection of more than 200 remote communities scattered across the nation’s largest state. Many villages are located far from main roads and are so isolated that they can only be reached by small plane. Postal service may be interrupted for several days due to bad weather or employee illness.

Polls also did not open for the August primary in Wales, in far western Alaska along the Bering Strait. In several other villages they opened late. At Anaktuvuk Pass, the polling station opened about 30 minutes before closing; only seven of 258 registered voters there voted in person.

This year, with control of Congress at stake, the consequences of any recurring problems during the November general election could be enormous. The state’s only representative in the House of Representatives is Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, the first Alaska native to serve in Congress. She is popular among Alaska Native voters, recently received the endorsement of the Alaska Federation of Natives and is in a tight re-election battle against Republican Nick Begich.

“This Congress seat will be won by dozens of votes,” Peltola said at the federation’s convention this month.

State, state and local officials say they are trying to ensure everyone has the opportunity to vote in the Nov. 5 election. In a written statement, Carol Beecher, Alaska’s elections director, called her agency “investing heavily in ensuring that all polling places are staffed and that polling stations open on time.” She acknowledged that it can be difficult to find temporary workers to conduct elections.

Like other indigenous peoples in the United States, Alaska Native voters have faced language barriers at the polls for years. In 2020, the state elections office was unable to send absentee ballots to a village in southwest Alaska. Mertarvik just in time for the primary because his staff didn’t know anyone lived there.

In June 2022, special primaries for the U.S. House of Representatives were held largely by mail following the sudden death of Republican U.S. House Representative Don Young. Some rural Alaska and low-income urban counties saw particularly high rates of rejected ballots — about 17% — largely due to missing witness signatures on envelopes or other errors that the state does not provide means to correct.

Two months later, polls in two southwest Alaska villages—Tununak and Atmautluaq—did not open for the regular primary and special general elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, which took place on the same day. Ballots from several other villages arrived too late to be fully counted under the new ranked-choice voting system the state uses for general elections.

“When things like this happen in rural Alaska, when it’s out of sight and out of mind, it seems like the system just shrugs and chalks it up to a character flaw in backcountry Alaskans,” said Michelle Spark of the nonprofit Get Out The Native. Vote: “And here we are saying that this is unacceptable.”

Alaska allows absentee voting, but that can pose its own challenges given the sometimes questionable reliability of mail delivery in rural Alaska.

The Alaska Federation of Natives, Alaska’s largest Native organization, passed a resolution last year expressing concerns about the Postal Service. It surveys residents about their postal services, including how they affect their ability to vote or get medications.

Kaktovik is 670 miles (1,078 km) north of Anchorage, on Barter Island, between the Arctic Ocean and Alaska’s North Slope, an area of ​​vast treeless tundra almost the size of Oregon. During the eternal darkness of winter, temperatures can drop to 20 below zero F (29 below C). Air service provides the only year-round access to Kaktovik, and during the warmer months goods are delivered by ocean barges.

It is the only settlement in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and whether the next presidential administration will support oil drilling in the reserve (as many villagers hope) is a major concern. The nearest community is Deadhorse, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) to the west, an oil company supply stop that marks the end of the gravel road featured in the reality TV show “Ice Road Truckers.”

About 270 Kaktovik residents, mostly Inupiat, live in single-story houses arranged in a grid of about 20 blocks. They subsist by hunting caribou and bowhead whales; Village whalers caught three bowheads this year.

After slaughtering whales on a nearby beach, villagers put the bones away where polar bears feast on their waste. This has made Kaktovik a popular destination for polar bear tourism. The village also has a polar bear patrol, led by the village’s mayor, Nathan Gordon Jr., which chases the animals out of town when they get too close.

During the August primary, some residents were out hunting or fishing. The mayor was on vacation with his family in Anchorage.

Madeline Gordon, a former election official, has taken a new job at a village grocery store. Gordon, the mayor’s cousin, said she told the state elections office in Nome earlier this summer that she would not be able to vote in the primary, but the state nonetheless sent her a box of ballots to her home.

She gave the box to city employee Tiffany Kayotuk. A government official advised Kayotuk to hold him until further notice, Kayotuk said. The box was still in her office when she went on maternity leave on the day of the primary.

Long before this, it was clear that Kaktovik would need help in holding the primaries.

Kalik, deputy counsel to the top official of the North Slope Regional District — the equivalent of county governments in other states — posted a flyer asking for help staffing the election on a community center bulletin board. Recently it was still hanging there, next to one for the volunteer fire department and another for the local fuel depot. He also posted announcements on the community’s Facebook page.

But the position required travel to Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, for training. And, according to Kaleak, the wages – $20.50 an hour – are not enough to be attractive in the country, where gas costs $7.50 a gallon and other goods shipped over long distances are just as expensive. Small pumpkins were $80 each this month.

Taylor Thompson, who heads the North Slope County’s legal department, said a borough official contacted the state elections department before the August primary to see if they expected problems and offered to bring a borough staffer to the village if necessary.

“The state just wouldn’t buy us into it,” Thompson said.

She said she “lost it” when she learned from a news article that the Kaktovik site had not opened. This time, the municipality sends a worker to Kaktovik to ensure the opening of the polling station for the general election.

“We will make sure that someone is there no matter what if the state is not going to meet its obligations,” Thompson said.

The township also tried to coordinate with the state to ensure poll workers were available in two other villages, Nuiqsut and Anaktuvuk Pass.

Beecher, the elections director, said the state was notified late the night before the primary that there was no one to man the polls in Kaktovik. The unit immediately contacted the village and area in hopes of finding someone, she said.

“Unfortunately, despite best efforts, sometimes trained personnel are no longer available, requiring the department to hire other workers and train them at short notice,” Beecher said.

The mayor said that he received a scolding when he returned from vacation.

“I end up coming back and hearing about how the primaries weren’t open and how people had to miss their first election,” Gordon Jr. said.

Charles Lampe, president of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation and a city councilor, advocates for city officials to be trained in election work. This way, he said, “nothing like this will ever happen again.”

Kalek said disenfranchising Alaska Native voters should cause the same outrage as disenfranchising voters anywhere else in the country.

“Every person should have a voice, and it should be counted, and it should be fair,” he said.

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Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska. Johnson reported from Seattle.