Too hot to hold: Deadhorse in new Prudhoe voting precinct

Wadeen Hepworth

Editor’s note: This is Oil Patch Insider’s week off but columnist Wadeen Hepworth said the following information was too hot to hold.

In the June 30 edition of this column, I wrote that Prudhoe Bay voters no longer had to travel 168 miles to vote or send in an absentee ballot because Prudhoe Bay had a new voting precinct. At that time Deadhorse, with 31 registered voters, was not included in the new precinct because of the distance to travel to Prudhoe in winter conditions.

Sometime between June 26 and July 3 this decision was reversed by the state and the Deadhorse voters are now included in the precinct.

In our July 7 issue we wrote that Carlile Transportation had volunteered its Deadhorse terminal as a polling place. The terminal is just two blocks from the Prudhoe Bay post office.

On July 8, Bertha Panigeo, the clerk of the North Slope Borough was to receive clarification of the new lines (the borough has a local districting process if its own) from Janet Kowalski, director of the state Division of Elections, and Monica Giang, the Nome election supervisor for Region 9. After this meeting Bertha and the officials of the borough expected to have a clearer idea if it is feasible to include the new precinct in the next general elections in October. (Update on this next week.)

Currently, the Prudhoe precinct can only vote in state and federal elections so the decisions made by the borough are important to these registered voters. It became even more important when we learned that about 98 percent (I originally said 90 percent to be on the safe side but learned since then the number is closer to 98 percent) of the borough’s income comes from Prudhoe Bay.

I expect to talk to the borough in the next few days to see if it has made any decisions about a local vote for the folks at Prudhoe.

I am also waiting for a definition of the boundaries of the new voting precinct. This information was not to be released until all the state legal descriptions for all precinct boundaries were completed. I expect to have an update in our July 21 issue.