KAKTOVIK, Alaska — Early last summer, George Kaleak, a whaling captain in the small Alaskan Native village of Kaktovik, on an island in the Arctic Ocean just off the state’s north coast, pinned a flyer to the ribbon-lined blue board, from the center of the community.

“Attention residents,” it said. “Looking for an election chairman to preside over the August and November elections. … If you are interested, please contact State of Alaska Nome Elections.”

No one was interested, Kaleak said, and the state failed to provide a supervisor of elections or election workers.

When the mayor arrived on August 20, Kaktovik’s polling station did not open. There was nowhere for the village’s 189 registered voters 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 in Kaktovik earlier this month.

The development could have shocked voters or politicians elsewhere in the US, particularly in swing states, where any irregularities in the poll prompt scrutiny from party activists and news organizations, conspiracy theories spread on social media and calls for an investigation.

In Kaktovik, life went on. Some residents were frustrated, but turned their attention to a more pressing matter: the start of the whaling season.

The closed polling station represents only the most recent example of persistent voting challenges in remote Alaska Native villages, a collection of more than 200 remote communities that dot the nation’s largest state. Many of the villages are far from the main road system, so isolated that they are only accessible by small plane. Mail service may be stopped for days due to severe weather or worker illness.

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

This year, with control of Congress on the line, the implications of any repeat problems during the November general election could be enormous. The state’s only representative in the House is Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola — the first Alaskan native to serve in Congress. She is popular among Alaska Native votersrecently won the endorsement of the Alaska Federation of Natives and is in a close re-election battle against Republican Nick Begich.

“This congressional seat will be won by dozens of votes,” Peltola told a federation convention this month.

State, regional and local officials all say they are trying to make sure everyone can vote in the Nov. 5 election. In a written statement, Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, called her agency “very invested in making sure all precincts are staffed and locations open on time.” She acknowledged that it can be difficult to find temporary workers to help run the election.

Like others Indigenous populations of the US, Alaska Native voters for years faced language barriers at the polls. In 2020, the state Division of Elections failed to mail absentee ballots to the Southwest Alaska village. Mertarvik in time for the primary because his staff I didn’t realize anyone lived there.

In June 2022, a special primary for the US House was held primarily by mail after the sudden death of Republican US Representative Don Young. Some rural Alaska and lower-income urban districts had particularly high rates of rejected ballots — around 17 percent — largely because of missing witness signatures on envelopes or other mistakes the state did not provides no way to correct them.

Two months later, precinct locations in two Southwest Alaska villages — Tununak and Atmautluak — have not opened for primaries and special general election for the US Housewhich took place on the same day. Ballots from several other villages arrived too late to be fully tabulated in the new ballot system the state is using for general elections.

“When these things happen in rural Alaska, when they’re out of sight and out of mind, it seems like the system just shrugs it off and considers it a character flaw for remote Alaskans,” said Michelle Sparck, with the nonprofit organization Get Out The Native. Vote “And we’re here saying this is unacceptable.”

Alaska allows absentee voting, but that can present 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 raising concerns about the mail service. It studies residents about the postal service, including how it affects their ability to vote or get medicine.

Kaktovik is 670 miles (1,078 km) north of Anchorage on Barter Island, between the Arctic Ocean and the North Slope of Alaska, a vast, treeless tundra area nearly the size of Oregon. The temperature can drop to 20 below zero F (29 below C) during the perpetual darkness of winter. Air travel provides the only year-round access to Kaktovik, with ocean barges delivering goods in the warmer months.

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

Kaktovik’s approximately 270 inhabitants, 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 have landed three young this year.

After butchering whales on a nearby beach, villagers pile the bones further afield, where polar bears feast on the scraps. That made Kaktovik a popular place for polar bear tourism. The village still has a polar bear patrolled by the village’s mayor Nathan Gordon Jr., to remove the animals from the town when they get too close.

During the August mayor, some residents were away hunting or fishing. The mayor was vacationing with his family in Anchorage.

Madeline Gordon, a former election worker, had taken a new job at a village grocery store. Gordon, the mayor’s cousin, said earlier this summer she told the Nome office of the state Division of Elections that she would not be able to participate in the primary, but the state still sent a box of ballots to her home.

She gave the box to a city clerk, Tiffani Kayotuk. A state official told Kayotuk to hang on until further orders, Kayotuk said. The box was still in her office when she went on maternity leave on Mayor’s Day.

It was clear long before then that Kaktovik needed help running the mayor’s office.

Kaleak, an assistant aide to the high-ranking official of the North Slope Regional District — the equivalent of a county government in other states — posted the flier seeking election staff help on the community center’s bulletin board. It was still hanging there recently, next to one for the volunteer fire department and another for the local fuel depot. It also posted notices on a community Facebook page.

But the position required travel to Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, for training. And, Kaleak said, the pay — $20.50 an hour — wasn’t enough to be attractive in a village where gas is $7.50 a gallon and other goods, shipped long distances, are the same of expensive Small pumpkins were $80 each this month.

Taylor Thompson, who heads North Slope Borough’s legal department, said a borough official reached out to the state elections division before the August primary to see if he anticipated trouble and offered to fly a borough employee to the village , if necessary.

“The state just wouldn’t accept us,” Thompson said.

She said she “lost it” when she learned from a news article that Kaktovik’s compound had not opened. This time, the district is sending a worker to Kaktovik to make sure the precinct opens for the general election.

“We’re going to make sure someone is there, no matter what, if the state defaults,” Thompson said.

The district also tried to coordinate with the state to ensure that votes would be filled in two other villages, Nuiqsut and Anaktuvuk Pass.

Beecher, director of the elections division, said the state was notified late in the afternoon before the primary that Kaktovik had no one to drive the polls. The division immediately went to the village and neighborhood in hopes of finding someone, she said.

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

The mayor said he had an earful when he returned from vacation.

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

Charles Lampe, President of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. and city council member, agrees that city officials should be trained to work in elections. That way, he said, “nothing like this ever happens again.”

For Kaleak, the disenfranchisement of Alaska Native voters should raise as much outrage as the disenfranchisement of voters anywhere else in the country.

“Every person should be able to have a vote and it should count and it should be fair,” he said.

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

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