Locked state bag with a completed ballot and election materials was found off an Anchorage road

The Alaska Division of Elections is investigating how a bag containing a voted ballot and election materials was found last week lying off the side of a road near Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

Elections director Carol Beecher said the bag was being delivered to Anchorage from Old Harbor, a majority Alaska Native village on Kodiak Island. An air carrier contracted by the U.S. Postal Service lost the bag, but it was recovered intact, she said. The voted ballot was successfully sent to Juneau to be counted, she said.

Kyle Brunke, who works at the airport for United Parcel Service, said he found the election materials bag on his early morning drive to work Aug. 23. Rounding the corner on Lockheed Avenue, Brunke said, he spotted a “big red bag sitting on the side of the road.”

“I got out of my vehicle, went over, picked it up, saw that it said ‘Division of Elections,’ and it had some weight to it,” he said.

Brunke assumed the bag was filled with ballots. UPS used to have a contract with the Postal Service, and he said he had seen “these bags countless times.”

“I’ve been at this job for almost 20 years now, and I immediately assumed foul play. I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you fall on — somebody’s ballot not being counted frustrates me,” he said.

At 5:30 a.m., the Division of Elections offices weren’t open yet. Brunke contacted people he thought could help and eventually spoke to Big Lake Republican state Rep. Kevin McCabe. McCabe urged Brunke to contact the division. McCabe’s staff spoke to the division themselves, and to the lieutenant governor’s office.

Around 10 a.m. on Aug. 23, Jeff Congdon, the Region II elections supervisor, arrived at Brunke’s workplace to pick up the bag. Initially, “he was pretty flustered,” Brunke said. But upon seeing the bag’s color, “a wave of relief washed over his face,” he said.

The Division of Elections mails green bags to dozens of remote precincts across Alaska. They are returned containing locked bags filled with voted ballots. The red bags largely contain election materials, such as pens and posters to hang up in polling places, officials said.

The red bag Brunke found contained a single questioned ballot from Old Harbor and election materials, Beecher said. The ballot was secured in its own locked Tyvek bag. The red bag was still locked when it arrived at the Division of Elections’ office in Anchorage, she said.

“Nothing had been tampered with. But in the meantime, we’re very concerned,” she said.

What went wrong

The Alaska Division of Elections relies on the U.S. Postal Service to send and receive ballots to remote precincts across Alaska. But the system is prone to challenges.

“Once we mail something, then we are dependent on their processes and their security measures that are in place to ensure that a piece of mail gets from point A to point Z,” Beecher said.

The Postal Service in turn contracts with air carriers to fly mail to remote villages. The red bag was lost on its way back to the Division of Elections in Anchorage, officials said.

“After reviewing the circumstances, Postal Management has determined that the red bag appears to have fallen out of a dolly or chain cart, which is a piece of equipment used to transport freight and mail, while it was in possession of an air carrier,” said James Boxrud, a spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service.

The Postal Service declined to name the air carrier mailing the red bag. Boxrud said “the defective chain cart” was taken out of service.

After the bag was recovered, the Postal Service reported a mail irregularity — a filing that means a meeting “must be scheduled” with the air carrier to discuss “contract compliance and performance.”

“Postal management met with the contract carrier’s leadership, conducted additional trainings with the carrier’s employees, and addressed proper handling of Election Mail (including red bags) and mail in general,” he said.

The red election bag was being mailed from Old Harbor, an Alutiiq village on the southern side of Kodiak Island, that has a population of 216, according to the 2020 U.S. census. Seventeen Old Harbor residents cast a ballot in August’s primary, according to the latest state election data.

Problems with mailing ballots from rural Alaska are not uncommon. Two years ago, 259 ballots from six villages were not fully counted in the November general election because the Postal Service delivered them late. A similar incident saw seven villages’ ballots not fully counted in that August’s special U.S. House election.

Michelle Sparck of Get Out the Native Vote said she had not heard that an election materials bag had been lost and recovered last week in Anchorage. But she was “stunned.”

Earlier in the year, Sparck said, she had spoken at the Alaska Air Carriers Association’s annual conference. Her goal was to encourage better collaboration and coordination with air carriers to ensure all ballots are mailed on time. And she wanted to ensure that the green and red election bags are recognized as critically important by air carriers.

“We’re making sure that their pilots, their village agents and their baggage handlers are mindful of identifying this equipment and prioritizing them during election season,” she said.

What next?

Big Lake GOP Rep. Kevin McCabe posted to social media Tuesday, asking how state election officials would work to prevent a similar incident from happening again.

“Ensuring the integrity of these processes is a critical part of your responsibility,” he said in a letter to the division.

A spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, the top state official overseeing Alaska’s elections, said the division was working with the Postal Service “to ensure a comprehensive review to determine how (the bag) ended up where it was reported to be found.”

“Any incident that raises questions about the security and handling of election materials is taken very seriously,” the Dahlstrom spokesperson said.

In a prepared statement, Boxrud said “the Postal Service takes this issue very seriously.”

“We have worked and continue to work closely with state officials to resolve concerns ahead of the November election. The Postal Service is committed to the secure, timely delivery of the nation’s Election Mail,” he said.

In the meantime, the Division of Elections is “experimenting” with how to better track ballots and election materials as they are sent across Alaska, Beecher said.

“We’re trying to figure out a way to at least have some idea of where the bags are,” she said.

For this August’s primary, the Division of Elections placed tracking devices in its green and red election bags, the Alaska Beacon reported. The red bag from Old Harbor had a tracking device, but it didn’t show a precise location, Beecher said.

“It doesn’t break down in a granular enough way for us to know if it was at the post office or if it was close to the post office, and in this case, if it was in a ditch,” she said.

The bag was recovered intact and officials said the voted ballot was sent along to Juneau to be counted. McCabe credited state election officials with taking the incident seriously. He said he was “happy that the Division of Elections is stepping up,” but suggested there was room for improvement.

“I don’t necessarily think there was a bunch of fraud in our elections,” he said in a Wednesday interview. “But I do think there’s a few single points of failure, and this might be one of them, so it’s something that we need to resolve.”