Bringing Alaska Native Voters Back to the Polls

In 1982, Alaska Native voting reached some of its highest numbers. That year, the village of Akiachak, with a population of less than 500, posted a 96.4 percent turnout, and other communities also recorded high numbers. Then the numbers began declining, and in 2022, only 29.7 percent of Akiachak’s voters cast ballots, Sparck said.

Citizenship and voting rights for Native Americans, including Alaska Natives, came through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Although for many minorities, the path to voting took longer. In Alaska, the very next year, 1925, the Territorial Legislature passed a law requiring voters to display proficiency in English, essentially disenfranchising many Alaska Natives who spoke their Native languages. The 1965 Voting Rights Act ended poll taxes, literacy tests, and other barriers to voting for minority groups, including Native Americans. However, minorities across the country and in Alaska continued to face obstacles to voting.

GOTNV notes on its website the group’s beginnings “as a loose coalition to increase civic engagement in Native communities . . . and until 1999 it was a dispersed grassroots effort with few resources and support.” One crucial goal for Native leaders in the 1990s was to attain a rural preference for subsistence, a way of life for rural Alaskans, especially Alaska Natives, who rely on wildlife to supplement expensive groceries flown in from afar.

Alaska Native leaders recognized the importance of subsistence and the importance of the Native vote on those issues by supporting the election of officials sympathetic to subsistence. “Regional and village, local tribal groups, and local governments and AFN all worked to get Alaska Natives registered so they could vote on these important issues,” said Barbara Donatelli, retired senior vice president at Cook Inlet Region, inc. (CIRI) who is on the GOTNV board.

Native corporations also actively worked to raise money to encourage Native voting. Vicki Otte, now retired after a career with several Native organizations, including CIRI, remembers Native leaders giving speeches about the subsistence issue and encouraging voter turnout. “We also had a lot of political action committees that raised a lot of money and allowed us to reach out to our people to encourage their participation,” Otte said.

The turnout remained high until the 1990s but decreased after the state blocked the rural subsistence preference in state law. Midterm elections, such as the last one in 2022, do not draw as many voters as presidential elections. In Alaska, however, small increases were noted, starting with the Special Primary in June, then August, and finally in November. It was still a far cry from the high rates of the early 1980s. The higher turnout in rural areas might be attributable to the candidacy of Mary Peltola, Yup’ik, who was running for the late Rep. Don Young’s Congressional seat.

A lot has changed at GOTNV since the 1990s. In 2004, with the assistance of the ANCSA Regional Association, it became a nonprofit. Another change came in 2020, when GOTNV became a Cook Inlet Tribal Council affiliate, and in early 2022, it hired Sparck to help with its 2025 Strategic Plan and coordinate with two entities deeply involved in elections—the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the state Division of Elections.

Sparck remembers hearing Elders talk about high voter numbers in Native villages. When she joined GOTNV, she decided to verify those claims. “I went on a mission to confirm that, and I found out that 1982 was our highwater mark, but it dropped precipitously by 2022,” she said.

“The 2020 Census showed Alaska Natives at nearly 22 percent of the state’s total population or one in four voters—25% of the electorate,” Sparck said, “making them one of the most powerful voting blocs in the state.” Sparck knows Alaska Natives can change the outcome of future elections, and she wants to see more Natives voting again.

Sparck’s work focuses on Alaska House Districts 36–40, which together include 147 precincts and 58,071 voters. The districts are predominantly Native and mainly along the coast, from the Aleutians to the North Slope, except for District 36 which is in Interior Alaska. In the November 2022 election, 38,000 or 65 percent of those 58,071 voters did not vote. The drop is across most communities. An increase in a district population did not translate to higher numbers of voters either. “In District 38, population has quadrupled since 1982, but voting has stayed stagnant,” Sparck said.

The drop in Akiachak surprised Sparck because in the last two decades the village brought about “two of the more consequential pieces of legislation when it successfully sued the state of Alaska for language access at polling places and fair education funding for rural schools,” she said. In the October school board 2022 election in Akiachak, only four people voted, a less than 1% turnout for a village with 441 registered voters in a population of 667.

In the 2016 election, Alaska voters approved a ballot measure that automatically registered eligible individuals to vote when they applied for a Permanent Fund Dividend. The thinking behind the measure was that automatic registration would increase voter participation for all populations, but the numbers stayed low.

Low Native voter turnout may also be due to the lack of any burning issues, such as the push for rural subsistence preference in the 1980s and 1990s, Donatelli said. However, Sparck found other reasons for the decline. After starting with GOTNV, Sparck began coordinating efforts for the 2022 special primary, primary and general elections, with the state Division of Elections and the USPS. The turnout for the elections in rural districts stayed down.

“The vastness and low population of Alaska and systemic barriers all hinder the conduct of elections in the state,” Sparck noted. “Erecting polling stations involves coordination between the Division of Elections, the USPS, Air Carriers, Tribes or City Clerks, and a loose army of volunteers.” Sometimes a village will hold a successful election but then other factors, such as extreme weather or lack of staffing at the post office, hinder the timely return of completed ballots to the Division of Elections.

“The Division of Elections is charged by law to recruit and train precinct and absentee voting staff,” Sparck said. She continues, “However, the division suffers from recruitment and retention issues, in much the same way the U.S. Postal Service does.”

More than any other state, Alaska relies heavily on a well-coordinated effort between the USPS and air carriers to conduct an election. Sparck’s discussions with the USPS revealed how 75 roadless precincts had no Post Master Relief workers (PMRs), who are essential for keeping post offices open. “PMRs are needed because if a Post Master is absent for any reason, the PMR takes over with all the rights and privileges of the Post Master,” Sparck said. The lack of PMRS means 75 post offices, representing 14,303 voters, are vulnerable to closures or operate on a limited schedule.

“Although the Postal Service advertises for workers, its recruitment process is onerous for village residents, according to Sparck. She continues, “They post the jobs on their website and Indeed.com, an internet jobsite. Not many villagers are going to check for jobs online because many don’t have resources such as computers, good internet service, or a printer.”

The 2022 elections suffered from several problems. In one case, the November ballots from six villages did not get back in time to the Division of Elections, and 259 voters in those communities had their votes only partially counted, the Alaska Beacon reported. The Division of Elections blamed the USPS. “For the August primary, four polling places—Atmautluak, Tununak, Venetie, and Holy Cross—failed to open because election workers were not secured or fell through,” Sparck said.

For Sparck, such failures point to a more significant problem. The casual manner of postal operations in remote communities troubles her and she feels problems from it can “bleed into other parts of our civic life, including our constitutional rights to be able to access government mail, medications, the forms that we have to fill out on certain timelines and making sure an election happens.” In a community without a working post office, poll workers cannot give the election equipment and ballots to the Post Master to send back to election officials.

Last year, GOTNV initiated several measures to help increase voting. It hired community organizers in about a dozen villages, and voter numbers went up a little, according to Sparck. The “Drive to the Polls” incentive offering $300 to Native organizations in the community to help pay for vehicle use and a driver to take people to the polling stations, drew interest from about a dozen communities. Sparck also worked with several organizations such as Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation in the Bering Straits region, the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Council, and NANA’s village-based staff in their shareholder communities to walk them through the sample ballots under the new election law.

Another innovation was to ensure the staff of Ryan Air, the major air carrier in Districts 36–40, knew what election equipment looked like and were aware of the importance of delivering them to and from villages in time. “I spoke with Lee Ryan, and he said, ‘No one has ever pointed out the deadlines and identified the election equipment to us before,’” Sparck said. Based on her discussion, GOTNV made 200 copies of a flyer identifying election equipment for baggage handlers, pilots, and agents, which Ryan Air posted at all its destinations.

In less than twelve months, voters will be choosing a new president. They will also vote again for our lone United States Representative, Mary Peltola, a Yup’ik; the entire state House seats; and half of the state Senate. Sparck is readying for next year’s election.

In preparing for the next year’s election, GOTNV recently partnered with the Alaska Council of School Administrators in obtaining a three-year $3 million grant to teach civics in rural schools and to recruit Youth Ambassadors as Youth at the Booth volunteers to work elections. Sparck is also building up a volunteer network, raising funds from Native organizations to help GOTNV’s efforts, and working with nonprofits, corporations, and other tribal entities to help increase Native voter turnout in 2024.

“The coordination between GOTNV and the Division of Elections is good,” Sparck said, “and the division is aware of the problems and trying to resolve them.” Carol Beecher, director of the division, said her office is coordinating with the USPS and is also “exploring technologies that will allow us to track ballot bags so we can see that they have been mailed, are in transport, or if they are still in the village.”

All the efforts and hard work by GOTNV could pay off if the Native turnout increases in 2024. “1982 showed us what the rural and Native vote is capable of, and we want to recapture even a fraction of that next year,” Sparck said.

“Alaska Natives have finally arrived at a place where our identity, homeland, language, arts, culture, and Tribal and Native Corporation status make us a powerful force, and while we may not all vote the same, we have to recapture the sense of civic duty in that it takes a village to make elections happen,” Sparck said.

“A single vote is valuable. By becoming engaged, our villages can change the face of statewide politics from here on out,” she said.