AP, ANCHORAGE, Alaska
On a desolate slab of island tundra in western Alaska, a resident of Adak would again become the last American to cast an in-person ballot for president, continuing a 12-year tradition for the nation’s westernmost community.
The honor of having the last voter in the nation fell to Adak when they did away with absentee-only voting for the 2012 election and added in-person voting.
“People have a little bit of fun on that day because, I mean, realistically everybody knows the election’s decided way before we’re closed,” Adak City Manager Layton Lockett said. “But, you know, it’s still fun.”
Buildings on the former Adak Naval Air Facility sit vacant in Alaska in April 2015.
Photo: AP
When polls close in Adak, it is 1am on the East Coast.
Adak Island, midway in the Aleutian Island chain and bordered by the Bering Sea to the north and the North Pacific Ocean to the south, is closer to Russia than mainland Alaska.
The island best known as a former World War II military base and later naval station is 1,931km southwest of Anchorage and further west than Hawaii, where polls close an hour earlier.
Mary Nelson holds a printout of an article, saying she was the last person to vote in the 2012 US election, at her home in Mead, Washington, on Oct. 2.
Photo: AP
Mary Nelson said that then-US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was likely conceding the 2012 race to former president Barack Obama on election night when she became Adak’s first last voter in a presidential election, although she did not know Obama had been re-elected until the next morning when she turned on her computer to read the election results.
Nelson, who now lives in Washington, said she was a poll worker in Adak at the time and had forgotten to vote until just before the 8pm closing time.
“When I opened the [voting booth’s] curtain to come back out, the city manager took my picture and announced that I was the last person in Adak to vote,” she said.
A hiker walks a path to Lake Bonnie Rose on Adak Island, Alaska, on July 8, 2021
Photo: AP
That was also the end of the celebration since they still had work to do.
“We had votes to count, and they were waiting for us in Nome to call with our vote count,” she said.
There are US territories farther west than Alaska, but there is no process in the US Electoral College to allow residents in Guam, the northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the US Minor Outlying Islands to vote for president.
“I’ve been tickled pink and told people about it,” said Nelson, now 73. “I have the story I printed out about it and show some people who I think would think it’s a big deal, like my family,” she said.
Adak Island has historical significance for its role in WWII. The US built facilities on the island after Japanese forces took islands farther west in the Aleutian chain.
Troops landed in August 1942 to begin building a US Army base, and enemy planes dropped nine bombs on the island two months later, but in undeveloped areas, and riddled the landscape with machine gun fire. The US Navy began building facilities in January 1943.
In May 1943, about 27,000 combat troops gathered on Adak as a staging point to retake nearby Attu Island from the Japanese.
In a lighter note, the US Army attempted to start a forest on Adak Island between 1943 and 1945. A sign placed by residents in the 1960s outside the area of 33 trees reads: “You are now Entering and Leaving the Adak National Forest.”
Before the US Air Force base closed in 1997, there were about 6,000 residents on Adak Island. The 2020 Census counted 171 residents.
That has probably fallen to fewer than 50 full-time residents, Lockett said.
In Alaska, a school must have 10 students to remain open.
Mike Hanley, the Aleutian Region School District superintendent, said in an e-mail that the school closed last year after it started the year with six students.
That shrank to one by November, and then that student left.
By the time he notified the state education department, “there were literally no children on the island, not even younger pre-K students,” he said.
When it comes to politics, Lockett said it is pretty easy in a small town to know where your neighbors fall politically, but there seems to be one goal that unites everyone.
Whoever is in office, are they going to try to “encourage the military to come back to Adak in some way, shape or form?” he said.
“We’re kind of in that great midst of, what’s next for Adak, because we’re struggling,” he said.
For now, with the presidential election coming up, the city can focus on its unique place in the US.
“I’m not sure who the last voter will be this year,” Adak City Clerk Jana Lekanoff said. “Maybe it’ll be a bit of a competition?”
