For Odette Edgar, Election Day looms, but so does vacation.<\/p>\n
The Juneau resident was among more than 160 people who walked through the doors of the polling station in the State Office Building atrium before 3 p.m. Monday and cast some of the first Alaska votes in the 2016 general election.<\/p>\n
Monday was the first day of early voting in the election, and it will continue every workday through Nov. 7. Election Day is Nov. 8.<\/p>\n
Edgar, who voted with two others, said she wanted to vote because she\u2019s interested in the presidential race but she\u2019ll be on vacation in early November.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s terrifying,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like the entire history of the world depends on this election.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others who walked into the polling station said they simply wanted to get it out of the way. They\u2019ve heard enough about the candidates, and they\u2019re ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to get it out of the way before the big crowd comes,\u201d said Jared Shucha, who wore his blue \u201cI Voted Today!\u201d sticker at lunchtime.<\/p>\n
Bill Dillon, who voted at the same time, said he\u2019s made it a habit to vote early for every year he\u2019s lived in Alaska. Like Shucha, he wants to beat the rush.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at this line I\u2019m in!\u201d he said, gesturing at the few people in front of him.<\/p>\n
The line might have looked small, but poll worker Hali Denton said it was \u201creally busy,\u201d with 63 people voting by noon.<\/p>\n
In her experience, the first and last days of early voting are the busiest, with downtime between.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not so certain that will be the case this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything else is different this year; maybe that\u2019ll be different too,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In Juneau, the Division of Elections operates polling stations in the State Office Building and the regional elections office in the Mendenhall Mall Annex. Any registered Alaska voter can vote early; no advance notice is required, but you will need to bring a photo ID or a voter ID. Voting is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each workday.<\/p>\n
Other early-voting locations in Southeast are available, but they tend to be restricted to local residents only. Visit the Division of Elections website at www.elections.alaska.gov\/AVO_GEN_2016.php for a full listing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Odette Edgar, Election Day looms, but so does vacation. The Juneau resident was among more than 160 people who walked through the doors of the polling station in the State Office Building atrium before 3 p.m. Monday and cast some of the first Alaska votes in the 2016 general election. Monday was the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":5683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5682"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}