This story was originally published by the Alaska Beacon.
Sunday, Oct. 6, is the deadline to register as an Alaska voter for the November general election.
Elections offices will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for in-person registration, and online registration is available. Voters can check their registration status online.
Alaska has the earliest voter registration deadline of any American state, according to an accounting by the Washington Post.
Someone who registers after the deadline can still vote in Alaska’s presidential election but not in state-level elections or the U.S. House election. Same-day registration is available for the presidential race.
The registration deadline is mostly a formality in Alaska, which has two automatic-registration systems. Anyone who receives a driver’s license can be automatically registered to vote, and anyone who applies for a Permanent Fund dividend is asked whether they want to be registered to vote.
Both systems have been extraordinarily effective. Because it takes several years of inactivity before someone is removed from the voter rolls after moving away, Alaska has a voter registration rate above 100%.
Those who need to register outside those systems tend to be those who have recently moved to the state, those who just turned 18 years old, those who recently became citizens, and those who recently had their voting rights restored after leaving probation for a felony.
Any voter who wants to cast a ballot by mail instead of in person does need to take additional action, however.
Alaska only mails ballots to voters who request them, though some municipalities, including Anchorage and Juneau, conduct their municipal elections automatically by mail.
Ballots can be requested by email, through a paper form, or online.
Eligible voters have until Oct. 26 to request that a ballot be sent to them. The first ballots have already been sent to some international, military and remote voters, and about 150 people had voted and returned their ballots by Tuesday morning, an elections official said.
James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. A graduate of Virginia Tech, he is married to Caitlyn Ellis, owns a house in Juneau and has a small sled dog named Barley.
