The Alaska Division of Elections says Delta Junction voters cast 243 ballots in the general election that ended Tuesday. That’s a little over 25% of the town’s registered voters, according to unofficial results the division posted Wednesday morning.
Nearly 1,100 ballots were cast by voters who live in an outlying area called Deltana. That’s about a bit over 32 percent of the unincorporated area’s 3,381 voters, according to the data posted on the division’s website.
The State of Alaska issued 132,000 ballots for the general election. And as of Wednesday morning, 113,322 had been returned, according to the data.
Hundreds of voters turned out Tuesday at the Delta-Deltana polling place in the Delta Junction Community Center. A poll watcher said there was a steady flow of voters at the community center throughout the day.
A poll watcher said about 20 people were waiting outside the Delta Community Center when the polls opened at 7 a.m. By 2 p.m., more than 700 ballots had been cast, according to the poll watcher. About 4,500 people live in the greater Delta area.
A poll worker said it was the biggest election turnout she’d ever seen in Delta.
Carol Dunlap-Austin was one of those voters. She said after casting her ballot that she’s glad the election is over. She hoped the tsunami of political advertising, including mailers, online spam and television ads, would subside.
“Last night, I think there were three Sullivan ads, one right after another, and two of them were the same things,” she said. “I feel like I was being pressured and kind of bombarded.”
Dunlap-Austin said when she went into the post office earlier that day to check her P.O. box, she saw piles of political advertising that other postal patrons had thrown into a couple of overflowing trash cans and onto nearby sorting tables.
“They were filled with, I would say, between one and two feet of piles of political things. And they were falling onto the floor.”
So she and another woman cleaned up the mess..
“ We got a couple garbage sacks from the postmaster and picked up what we could. And then we left the bags open so people could throw more stuff in. But it was a shame. Nobody's reading that stuff.”
Another voter, Leunda Clark, said he also was frustrated by the tsunami of political advertising, and the mudslinging tone of all that slop.
“ Now it just seems like everybody's throwing dirt at each other,” he said on his way out. “There's no such thing as an honest election.”
One area voter who didn’t want to be identified had another concern – the security of the voting-tabulation machines used by the state of Alaska and most other state.
“ There’s been whole piles of election fraud being uncovered across the entirety of the country.” he said. “The Dominion voter machines were basically built using Chinese hardware.”
The man said he knew that he’d just cast his ballot using a Dominion voting machine. But he was hopeful it was one that had been fixed by President Trump.
“ Trump really cracked down on a lot of that,” he said. “And while I did notice that it is a Dominion rig being used here, I don't know if they've gone through and patched those or if it's like, ‘Oh, yeah, um, none of your votes actually counted because stuff has been compromised.’ ”
Conspiracy theories involving Dominion voting machines have for years been circulating around the country. But numerous investigations have proven the allegations to be false.
Most likely, the man’s vote will be among many others cast by Alaskans on that day.
