In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Amanda McColley. She’s the Regional Supervisor for the Division of Elections Region III office in Alaska, which covers Fairbanks and the interior of Alaska.
They spoke about some of the unique challenges Alaskan election administrations can face – think having to load election equipment onto small charter planes – as well as some of the challenges they share with the lower 48, such as voter education around rank choice voting and training election staff.
High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits:
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson
Transcription of the episode is as follows:
Amanda McColley: Our stuff can change just, you know, in a split second on, you know, due to weather or something. So, like I said, trying to get things out as soon as possible is really the key to success. But we have local airlines that are, like, charter flights, and a lot of them are used for, like, tourists, things to take people, or we just have a lot of folks that are in the rural communities that need to come into Fairbanks or Anchorage to get supplies, you know, and bring it back home with them. So, we use those resources to typically send out our materials.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]
Brianna Lennon: Welcome back to another exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. This is Brianna Lennon. I'm one of the hosts and the county clerk for Boone County, Missouri. And with me is my co-host –
Eric Fey: Hey. I'm Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri.
Brianna Lennon: And today we are really excited to have Amanda McCollery, and you can introduce yourself –
Amanda McColley: Hi. So, I am Amanda McColley.. I am the Regional Supervisor for the Region III office here in Alaska for the Division of Elections.
Brianna Lennon: And we will get more into Alaska elections as we get into the conversation, but we always want to start out by asking how you got involved in working in elections.
Amanda McColley: Yeah, it kind of just was a, I guess, a luck thing. I had a friend that worked in the office here, and they needed some temporary in-office employees for the 2014 election cycle, and then we kind of had an idea that there may be a permanent position coming available at the end of that cycle. And lo and behold, it did happen, and so, I moved into what's called the administrative clerk position. So, kind of front desk reception, you know, greet the public type work. And I was there for a couple of months, and then the opportunity to move up again into our assistant supervisor position presented itself, and I did that for roughly eight-ish years until March of 2023 when I was appointed into the regional supervisor position that I hold now.
Eric Fey: So, for those of us lower 48ers, tell us what does that mean to be a regional supervisor? So, my understanding is Alaska doesn't have counties like many states do. So you're administratively organized in a different fashion. Can you explain that to everybody a little bit?
Amanda McColley: Yeah. So, the Division of Elections, we are under the oversight of the Lieutenant Governor's office, and so, essentially, the Lieutenant Governor appoints a director, and so we have a director's office that's based in Juneau. And then we have five regional offices throughout the state. We have Anchorage , Juneau, Fairbanks, Nome, and then we recently added a Wasilla office. We have a satellite office in Kenai, and then we also have an absentee and petition office in Anchorage, as well. And so, all of those regional offices have oversight of certain areas of the state.
So, like you said, there's no counties here, but we do the oversight for the voter registration aspect for our cities and our boroughs – essentially is what they're called here – and so, they use us to get that information, they're responsible for conducting their own elections and they have their own code for that. But every August and November, in an even numbered year, we're putting on our state and federal elections, and then we also do conduct a rural school board election every October. So, that's kind of what we do.
Eric Fey: So, tell the folks listening, Amanda, a little bit about your area of responsibility geographically because I'm sure it's, in relation to, again, the lower 48 – I'm sure it's a very large geographical area. Can you talk about a little bit?
Amanda McColley: I like that you get the wording right on the lower 48, but yeah. So, Region Three here, we oversee what we call interior Alaska. So, I have about 70 precincts in my area, and it's about half and half on urban to rural. So, we have a lot of them are within the Fairbanks North Star borough, which is where I live, and then we have about half that are usually ones that are kind of accessible off of the main road systems here. But then we do have quite a few that are only accessible via plane. So, you know, we're having to put our, we have to send out our materials a lot earlier than we do for our urban areas here. In hopes that it gets there, you know, I know the USPS has always been kind of a hot topic with elections. So, we were really fortunate, and we had a great working relationship with our local USPS officials. They really stayed on top of making sure that we got everything that was going their route, you know, they did great on keeping things tracked and updating us on potential closures of Postmasters in those rural areas. So, yeah, that's kind of the geographic – I went off topic – but the geographic area. So, yeah, just the middle of the state is essentially what I could best describe it as.
Eric Fey: So, just real quick follow up on that, you know, when Brianna and I are organizing elections, you know, we have to maybe rent some trucks or get some extra vehicles to do delivery or maybe, you know, hire some folks to help with deliveries. You actually have to coordinate airplanes to take your election materials to certain places.
Amanda McColley: Sometimes. It depends on the community and it depends on, you know, our stuff can change just, you know, in a split second on, you know, due to weather or something. So, like I said, trying to get things out as soon as possible is really the key to success. But we have local airlines that are, like, charter flights, and a lot of them are used for, like, tourists things to take people, or we just have a lot of folks that are in the rural communities that need to come into Fairbanks or Anchorage to get supplies, you know, and bring it back home with them. So, we use those resources to typically send out our materials, but usually we're going through the USPS. We get everything all together. We hire a contractor that comes and picks everything up from us and then takes it to the post office, but the post office then is putting them on those smaller aircraft.
Brianna Lennon: I think that's a great explanation of, like, the prep work that is involved. On Election Day, people are casting their ballots – How are they? How are you accumulating, I guess, all of the results to get them all in? Like you had mentioned in the beginning that everybody knows how people had voted before Alaska even reports theirs. What are all the methods that are used to get the actual ballots back and tabulated?
Amanda Mccolley: Yeah, so we train our election officials throughout. We have two methods in the state. So, we have hand count. So, our really small communities, they are hand counting their results on election night. So, it can be an even longer day for them than it would be for, you know, even our busiest precincts because they have the machine that is helping tabulate their ballots for them. And then those folks can just, you know, hit the buttons, and it gets sent to Juneau, and they can report that. We have people in our rural areas here where they are counting the ballots, they get what's called a summary sheet, and they essentially record the votes on that sheet. And then election night, when they're done – we're getting inundated with phone call after phone call of them reporting those results. So, we essentially have an exact copy of what they've written on, we're transposing what they're telling us and putting it on that sheet, and then we then have to send that to Juneau so they can input it into the main program, so then that information can, or those results can be reported on time. So, there are times where, you know, it's a long day, and some people, you know, they don't remember to call in, or they're just so tired. So, unfortunately, you know, we're calling friends and families trying to say, “Hey, can you please, please, get us those numbers.”
Brianna Lennon: There are not very many states that have ranked choice voting, and the ones that do have, I feel like they're more geographically condensed, you know, Maine and things like that can do all of all of the tabulation in one place because it's more controlled, but with your mixture of hand counting and tabulation, it is interesting that Alaskan voters did want to keep the ranked choice voting – narrowly – but still wanted to keep the ranked choice voting that was implemented several years ago. I was wondering if you could touch on what impact – because you've been doing this work for a while – shifting to ranked choice voting has had on your prep work or the back end, or maybe it all made a lot of sense and hasn't really been an issue, and that's one of the reasons voters have been okay with it because they didn't really see much of a change.
Amanda McColley: Yeah. So, I guess I'll kind of backtrack a little bit on finalizing election night, and so, folks do have to send those ballots and everything back to us. So, they are given return items to be able to then send it back, and they're either dropping it off at their local post office or putting it on a plane. Typically, it is faster if they're just putting it directly on the plane and bypassing the Postal Service, but then we're not guaranteed that help from the postal service if they're not going that route.
And so, in terms of ranked choice, when it comes to that in the rural communities, the way it was put into the initiative and so, for our law and statute here, ranked choice isn't really touched until final results are done. So, we have 15 days after the general election to receive all eligible overseas ballots, 10 days for the domestic ballots. So, on that 15th day, then that's when we can start looking. So, when we're training our workers – we're saying “Only count your first choice votes.” So, we tell them, basically, “Put a hand over the columns that are second, third, fourth and whatnot, and just only look at those first” and that's all they're reporting to us on election night. And so, in regards to, I mean, implementing that – yeah, again, it's really, the biggest thing has been the voter education on it and trying to, you know, some people really don't like change, and so, it is a pretty big change because when that passed, it also changed our primary system.
So, before you essentially had to choose a ballot based on political affiliation, and so, if there were two candidates that, you know, you were passionate about, you had to choose the candidate or the ballot that had the candidate that you were more passionate about. Now, everybody's on one ballot, it doesn't matter how many, and then the top four move on to the general election. Those top four, essentially, are then ranked. We only had more than four in the presidential election because Alaska doesn't run presidential primaries for the state itself. The parties do that themselves, and so, we had, I think, eight or nine presidential candidates on our ballot. And so, we had to then effectively have the options for them to be ranked, depending on the voters choice. And so, yeah, implementing it and tabulating it – the tabulation part is mostly done in Juneau, you know, they essentially are programming that and they push their button and they're able to make all the math happen and tabulation on that part. So, here in the, you know, regional office level, yeah, it's just informing voters, you know, “You don't have to rank,” you know, “You can choose to rank as many or as few as you'd like,” you know, really educating, “Okay, well, if you, you know, rank Candidate B for your first choice, don't continue to rank them for your second, third and fourth, because then, I mean, once your candidate is eliminated, their vote stays with that candidate, just as it would in a non-ranked choice ballot.” So, just the voter education aspect here has been probably the most intense change.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Mid-break]
Eric Fey: Can you talk a little bit more about voter education? And probably, I imagine poll worker or election worker education, as well – well, let me backup, are you responsible for training or educating your election workers in your region?
Amanda McColley: Yep. So, every regional office is responsible for training their own workers. Sometimes we do have to collaborate just based off the geographical differences, and so we'll have to coordinate and work together. But yeah. So, here that was definitely a big change is trying to educate the workers. The biggest, the nicest thing, I guess, from that, is they really, it's not on them to truly explain those things because they're not us, but just trying to give them the confidence because if our workers aren't confident in it, then, you know, that just adds to all the other issues that could occur. So, just there's certain error messages that can pop up if somebody does do that, you know, Candidate B is their first, second, third, fourth choice. So, it gives the voter the option to correct that on the machine, and so, making sure that the worker, we have a little, what we call a little like cheat sheet guide that says, “Okay, if the error says this, then this is what the voter, you know, did wrong. If this says this, this is what they did incorrect,” and letting them know, “Hey, if you want to correct this, let's go about doing that.” So, we always kind of guide the workers to say, “Hey, if you don't feel comfortable, you know, please have the voter call us because if you're not confident in your response, then, you know, we want them to come to us as the source of trusted information.”
And so, the biggest part of the voter education aspect, again, is understanding, you know, how to properly fill out the ballot, and making sure that they understand, again, that if their candidate does not move on to the next round, it doesn't invalidate their vote. It's just their vote, their candidate didn't win, and just as it would be, you know, in years past, their vote stays with that candidate
Eric Fey: Real quick – do you train your election workers in person or virtually, or a mix or what?
Amanda McColley: A mix. Sometimes here in Fairbanks, it's easier, obviously, to get my 32 Fairbanks precincts together and get them all trained up. We have training materials available on our website, and then we do have, we hire somebody on, typically, to assist with training, and so, they can go out to the rural communities. So, yeah, they're going out on the, you know, the tiny little passenger planes to our small villages and meeting with those workers and training them up on on the processes, and then we do the Zoom meetings, if, you know – that's a last resort type thing, but we do try to do it in person as much as possible.
Brianna Lennon: I'm curious what you've seen – this is a much broader question, but I'm curious, in the time that you've been working up through your role and where you are now – how you've seen things change? Partly because I'm thinking you and I both serve on a national committee, which I feel like there's always been some cross pollination between states and things like that, but I think it's very – well, I would caution to assume anything, but I would think it would be very difficult for some more geographically separated states to be able to participate in a lot of things, and I was curious if you had noticed any sort of shift in, like, I guess, cross pollination of things from different places? Has there been an influence from what's happened from the national level, you know, like when we're talking about trends in elections administration and things, it's really easy to kind of paint with a broad brush about, like, the contiguous 48 states, but does that impact Alaska, as well?
Amanda McColley: I would say, you know, Alaska is pretty unique in that we, you know, we really do try to focus on Alaska and not let too much outside influence, you know, come in here. We do, you know, there have been times where I've had constituents come in and they, you know, say, “Oh, well, you know, such and such state does this, and another state does that,” and, you know, so, you know, one of the things that I think is great is that, you know, we want to be able to support other election officials and say, “Okay, yes, you know, these people are just like me, so if I'm doing, you know, a great job, then I know my my counterparts are doing a great job.” But at the same time, like you said, all of our laws are so different, and everything is so separate from state to state that when people come in and say, “Well, you know, why does one state have their results, you know, election night or whatnot,” then, you know, they are kind of curious, I guess, to say, in regards to, you know, “Why can't we do it like they can.” And I then have to then remind them, “Well, Alaska is very unique, and we have a very, very diverse population,” and, you know, we do want as many people's vote to count as possible, you know, within the applicable law. And so, we have certain things that are written into our law that allow for that, you know. We can receive ballots up to 15 days overseas for a general election because we do have a high military turnout or population here, you know, we have two very large military army bases, we have two air force bases – at least within Anchorage or Fairbanks – and then there's some others like Fort Greely, but just having that population, you know, we want every Alaskan to be able to voice their opinions, and I think that we do a great job doing what's right for us and kind of avoiding the outside noise.
Eric Fey: I know Alaska has a relatively large Native population, Alaska Native population, and my understanding, at least, is that election materials have to be in those native languages, and I'm assuming you might also have to recruit election workers that speak those native languages. So, is that the case in your region? If so, are there any particular challenges with those having materials in those languages and finding workers that speak those languages.
Amanda McColley: Yeah, so we actually have a language program manager that oversees a lot of that, but most recently, my region did have a certain language that we have to have, or we had to have workers that could speak that language or translate it written, but that changed with the last census, and so, that the communities that did have that requirement no longer meet that designation. So, we do have – throughout the state, though, there are other regions that have that same requirement, and I mean, it is speaking on the fact that I did it for so many years where having, you know, building the relationship with those workers, and having just, you know, the respect for their culture and for who they are, and, you know, just building that up as much as possible really does help. It helps them, you know, trust us. It helps, you know, I truly do care about the languages that we have here, and the Gwich'in language was the one that my region would oversee and have workers for, and it was, I loved hearing the workers, you know, speak to one another and just kind of, you know, have that connection because they had different dialects that was kind of funny because sometimes they would, you know, they would have discussions, or they would be writing things and like, “Oh, we don't do it that way. We do it this way,” and it was just really neat because a lot of it, too, is a spoken language. It's not written. And so, there are challenges that come with that. Making sure that what works in this language in this area is sufficient, and meeting what they understand compared to somebody, you know, just a town over, it could be pretty different. So, it definitely does have some challenges.
Eric Fey: So, my next question has to do with voter registration, and I don't know what the current state of this is in Alaska, but my understanding was a number of years ago, Alaska adopted this system where – well, to backup a little bit, I understand that everybody in Alaska receives some oil royalty payment every year just for, like, being an Alaska resident. And so, you want to make sure you keep your address up to date with the state, so you receive your payment to the right place, and that the state of Alaska decided some time ago to anytime somebody updated their address with the oil royalty database, it would also translate over to voter registration and make sure that their address for voter registration was updated accordingly. And if I'm understanding it correctly, it seems to me, Alaska might have the most accurate voter rolls in the entire country because everybody wants their check to come to the right place. So, I'm curious if that is, in fact, the case, and how this really plays out for you all?
Amanda McColley: I can't speak fully on what the accuracy of it is, it's kind of not really an area that I'm too involved in, but I can confirm, yes, we do get what's called the permanent fund dividend every October, and that's based off of oil revenue. And yeah. So, in 2016 the voters passed an initiative that essentially tied voter registration to an individual's permanent fund dividend application, and so, the application period for that is from January 1 until March 31 and then once we get that data from the PFD [Permanent Fund Dividend], they essentially, they have to kind of clean up their their part of it, you know, sometimes people may apply two different times because their address changed or something happened. So, they clean up their part of it, they send it to us, we then have to send notice to voters and give them a 30 day opportunity to opt out of any sort of either ended up registering or a change to their current registration. So, they get 30 days for that, and then we, after that process, we get all the information, and most of it can be automatically done, but if there's little kind of one offs in regards to, like, maybe somebody puts, you know, they transpose their their address of 123, and it's 321, or they put road instead of drive, or add a middle initial. And sometimes there's little things that kick it out to where it has to be manually looked at by a human eye, and so, we can be, you know, pretty busy – especially in an even numbered year for us of having to get through, you know, 1000s of applications to make sure that you know we're getting done before the deadlines that we have.
Brianna Lennon: I wanted to give you an opportunity to mention anything that we had not brought up, or anything that you wanted to make sure people knew about how elections work in Alaska, or misconceptions or anything you want to [mention]?
Amanda McColley: Yeah, no. I mean, just, you know, working here for as long as I have, you know, I've definitely seen change over the last 10, 11 years, and, you know, I can understand that people are skeptical over things. There's a lot of noise and confusion that's put out in the world. But, you know, we have really dedicated staff here, and we have a lot of really strict, you know, checks and balances, the audits that we do and the transparency. We have, you know, so I would like to say, you know, if people are unsure about things you know, just contact us. We're happy to talk to people, you know, our job is to educate and inform and, you know, every Alaskan is needing to, you know, get involved and stay engaged in the process because, you know, they're the ones that are going to be shaping the future of Alaska.
Eric Fey: You've been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local elections administration. I'm your host, Eric Fey alongside Brianna Lennon. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.
