More than a dozen communities in rural Alaska were unable on Wednesday to offer early in-person polling ahead of the state primary as required by law because of delays in the delivery of election materials.

State law requires absentee in-person voting locations to open two weeks prior to Election Day. Polling locations across the state opened Monday ahead of the Aug. 20 primary, when voters will choose between candidates for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat and 50 legislative seats.

But in at least 14 communities, absentee in-person voting locations were not open as of Wednesday morning, two days after early in-person voting had begun. And in 17 other locations, in-person polling was delayed by at least a day, according to the Division of Elections.

The communities where in-person polling had not begun as of Wednesday include Kokhanok, Nikolski, Akutan, Pedro Bay, Atka, Sand Point, St. George, Stony River, Napaskiak, Deering, Kivalina, Shaktoolik, Koyuk and St. Michael, according to the Division of Elections. The division provided the list in response to questions from a reporter but has not provided any specific details to the public.

[Early voting starts for Alaska’s Aug. 20 primary election]

Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher attributed the delay to the short window between when ballots are printed and delivered to regional offices. In rural Alaska, she said voting materials must be delivered by mail to Nome and then distributed across a vast area “through a variety of mail carriers.”

“Weather and other considerations factor into delivery of the materials,” said Beecher, who was appointed to the role last year and is overseeing a statewide election for the first time this month.

Beecher was appointed by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican running for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat. As a candidate, she had used her social media channels to encourage voters to cast their ballots early. In her current role, Dahlstrom oversees Alaska’s elections. She had not publicly acknowledged the delay in the start of in-person early voting in some communities.

The area where the arrival of election materials was delayed falls within the Division of Election’s Region 4, which covers northern and western parts of the state. The area includes four state House districts comprising rural Alaska, where voters are predominantly Alaska Native.

Alaska Natives have faced unequal access to voting in the state, prompting a years-long federal investigation.

Ballots and accompanying materials, including the envelope in which the ballots are delivered to the Division of Elections staff, were mailed from Nome to voting locations in rural Alaska on July 30. Getting election materials to the polling locations within a week “has proven to be ongoing challenging, and this year is nothing new,” Beecher said.

Alaska law requires the director of the Division of Elections to distribute all election materials to election supervisors “not less than 25 days before the date of the election,” which would be July 26 at the latest. Beecher said the division is “fully compliant” with the statute.

Eight polling locations did not receive voting materials until Monday, the day voting was set to begin. Nine other locations did not receive materials until Tuesday, Beecher said in her email. She did not provide the names of those 17 polling locations but said all of those locations had allowed voting to begin as of Wednesday.

“Each bag mailed has a USPS tracking number that allows the division to see where and when it arrived,” Beecher said.

According to information that Beecher said the postal service provided Wednesday afternoon, several of the affected communities had received their election materials on Wednesday. Postal service workers were unable to contact workers in Nikolski or Atka to determine the status of their deliveries, Beecher said.

Robyn Burke, an Utqiagvik Democrat running to represent state House District 40, said she tried to vote absentee in person at the North Slope Borough building on Tuesday, but was told that the envelopes meant for ballot delivery had not yet arrived in Utqiagvik, so voting was not yet possible. On Wednesday, Burke said she again called the Utqiagvik polling location and was told that in-person absentee voting was still not available.

Burke said that after she was turned away from voting in Utqiagvik, she called the Northwest Arctic Borough Building in Kotzebue as well. There too, election materials had not arrived as of Tuesday evening, forcing election workers to turn away voters, Burke said.

Burke said she wondered why the Division of Elections staff did not spread the word on its social media platforms about the delay in the arrival of the election materials, so that voters did not have to find out by going to the polling locations.

“It’s just frustrating,” she said. “With all of the other issues that have to do with voting in rural Alaska — for our polling sites to not even be open and accepting voters — I think that’s just uncalled for.”

“When you’re sending folks away from the poll, what if that discourages them from coming back?” she asked.

This is not the first time the Division of Elections has blamed election problems in rural Alaska on the postal service. In 2022, the division certified election results without fully counting the ballots from several predominantly Alaska Native communities, because mail delivery to the Division of Elections was delayed.

Beecher said that voters seeking to cast their ballots early in communities that still have not opened polling locations can apply for a mail ballot — as long as they do so by Saturday.

• • •

JUNEAU – Danielle and Kamal Lindoff almost became trapped in their Alaska home of more than 12 years after the nearby Mendenhall River reached record levels this week and flooded their community.

In the days leading up to the flood, residents were warned of the Mendenhall River rising due to a potential glacial outburst upstream. When the outburst seemed inevitable, Danielle and husband Kamal began to prepare their home for the worst.

“We thought we were fully prepared,” Lindoff said, noting how she and her husband used flood mitigation devices and techniques to seal their home off from as much floodwater as possible. They also moved belongings from the lowest level of their home to the upper levels.

GLACIAL LAKE OUTBURST FLOODS HOMES IN ALASKA AS RIVER RISES

Because of the measures they took, Lindoff said they decided to stay at home in hopes of mitigating the flood as it went on and saving what they could throughout the flooding event. Their home, which sits about 20 feet away from the river, survived the record flood event caused by the Mendenhall last year.

FILE: A home and trees fall into the Mendenhall River in Juneau, Alaska, on Aug. 5, 2023. The flooding was caused by a release of water from Suicide Basin.

(Sam Nolan / LOCAL NEWS X / TMX / FOX Weather)

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Then as night fell on Monday, it slowly became clear that this year’s flood event was going to be different.

At around 10:30 p.m., Lindoff could see in front of their home that water began to pour into the streets of their neighborhood, as the street drainage system began to fill up.

“It started with three feet of water, and it started rushing up towards everyone’s property,” Lindoff said.

The street in front of the Lindoff home, as it begins to flood.

(Danielle Lindoff / FOX Weather)

To make things worse, power to the neighborhood had been shut off as a safety precaution. However, it left the couple in their home in the pitch black of night, save for the light from a couple of candles and headlamps.

“Imagine being in darkness,” Lindoff said. “Imagine yourself hearing water or hearing a crash and not knowing where it’s coming from and having to trench through water that’s flowing in from all locations and trying to find out what happened.”

SEE ALASKA’S RAGING MENDENHALL RIVER ERODE RIVERBANK

Behind their home, the river began to rise and move closer to their doorstep, with the water reaching the top of their fence line and reaching their deck. With the river now at their doorstep, the situation became more dangerous for Lindoff and Kamal.

The river beginning to overtake the fence and deck.

(Danielle Lindoff / FOX Weather)

“Because [the house] became part of the river, any debris that was coming down the river found its way to our yard and then started hitting the house,” she said.

At this point, the only thing between their home and the river was their deck, which had buckled and warped. Despite being misshapen, the deck prevented debris from crashing through a sliding glass door and into their home.

The situation was becoming more precarious, and with the water coming through every crack it could find, Lindoff and her husband decided it was time to leave.

The Lindoff home with water coming through the door, illuminated by a headlamp.

(Danielle Lindoff / FOX Weather)

Their initial plan was to leave through the front door. However, as they approached it, so much water was gushing through that it pushed the door open. Lindoff and her husband struggled to close it.

“The biggest moment of fear and panic was when we opened that front door thinking that that was our way out,” she said. “Then that panic really set in with ‘Okay, that was our escape route.’”

Thoughts such as “Did we just seal ourselves in?” and “We’re stuck in here?” came to mind, she added.

With the front door no longer an option for escape, and the sliding door blocked by the warped deck, the couple resorted to their alternate plan of escaping through a second-story window.

Water is at their doorstep. Note the black sandbags at the bottom of the frame trying to keep the water at bay.

(Danielle Lindoff / FOX Weather)

Lindoff said her husband ended up jumping out of the window on the second level and then swam to where they had tied up a raft equipped with an engine. He then drove the boat back to the house and moved Lindoff and their two cats in carriers through the window and onto the boat.

“I just said ‘Goodbye’ to my house at that point because, there was so much water, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next,” she said.

They then drove through the flooded streets in the middle of the night and found a safe, dry place to stay with a family member.

WHAT TO DO IF YOUR HOUSE FLOODS

Now, Lindoff, her husband, and their 17-year-old daughter, who they had stayed with a friend the night of the flooding, are rebuilding what’s left of the devastated entry level of their home. Family and members of their community have also come out to help.

Cleanup efforts after the flood.

(Danielle Lindoff / FOX Weather)

Thinking back on the flooding event, not even two days ago, Lindoff recalls how she and her husband felt going into what would become a harrowing experience.

“This wasn’t our first time. It’s not like we didn’t know,” she said. “But the fact that we thought we were fully prepared, and the Mendenhall still said, ‘You can never be prepared’.”

To help the Lindoff family, you can donate to their GoFundMe here.

HOW TO WATCH FOX WEATHER

Flooding after the Mendenhall River crested to record levels. 

(City and Borough of Juneau / FOX Weather)

The National Weather Service Juneau reported that the Mendenhall River crested at 15.99 feet at 3:15 a.m. Tuesday morning. This breaks the record set last year, which was 14.97 feet.

The City and Borough of Juneau reported on Wednesday that more than 100 homes have been affected by the floodwaters.

CNN
 — 

A rush of water unleashed by an ailing glacier swelled an Alaska river to record levels Tuesday and caused destructive flooding in Juneau nearly a year to the date of a similar significant event.

More than 100 homes have been damaged or impacted by the so-called glacial lake outburst flooding along the Mendenhall River in the Mendenhall Valley, according to city officials, who characterized the flood severity as “unprecedented.”

Glacial lake outbursts happen when a lake of melting snow and ice and rain “drains rapidly – like pulling out the plug in a full bathtub” after pooling up so high it overtops the glacier that holds it back, the city of Juneau said in a news release.

The outbursts have become a regular occurrence since 2011 and are a consequence of climate change. The Arctic, including Alaska, is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet as global temperatures rise because of fossil fuel pollution.

This is causing glaciers to thin or melt altogether, including the Mendenhall and Suicide glaciers where the floodwaters originated. Part of the once icy expanse of the Suicide Glacier has been replaced by an earthen divot that gets filled up like a bathtub each summer, setting the sequence in motion.

The lake at Suicide Basin filled to the brim and then overtopped the glacier on August 1, city officials reported. It came after a very wet July with about twice as much rain as is typical. By Sunday it was clear water from the lake was reaching the river and by Monday city officials warned residents they might need to evacuate.

Water levels in the Suicide Basin lake dropped more than 400 feet after this year’s outburst, including more than 350 feet in 24 hours Monday into Tuesday.

All of that water caused the Mendenhall River level to skyrocket a record-smashing 15.99 feet on Tuesday morning, more than a foot higher than the levels hit last year when homes collapsed over the side of the eroded riverbank and into the waterway.

This year’s flooding reached farther into Mendenhall Valley. There was “a lot more water in the valley, on the streets, in people’s homes,” Juneau Deputy City Manager Robert Barr told the Associated Press.

Pictures posted by Alaska’s emergency management agency on Facebook showed homes surrounded by a milky expanse of floodwater high enough to cover vehicles’ hoods.

Some streets at one point had 3 to 4 feet of water, possibly more, Barr said. No one was injured and the city opened an emergency shelter, and about 40 people were there overnight.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration to aid the response and recovery.

“I am grateful no one has been injured or killed by this morning’s outburst flood,” Dunleavy said. “Emergency responders and managers have done an outstanding job keeping their residents safe.”

Floodwaters have since receded now that the glacial lake is no longer full and the river has dropped below flood stage, the National Weather Service in Juneau said.

CNN meteorologist Mary Gilbert and the Associated Press contributed to this report.