In two-and-a-half weeks, we will all go to vote – in fact, a lot of folks are already voting, in states with mail-in or early voting. But November 5th is the big day, when the contest between the Republicans Donald Trump/JD Vance and the Democrats Kamala Harris/Tim Walz will at last be decided. We hope, at least, that November 5th will decide it, and that when we awake on November 6th, it will all be over but the shouting.
Here’s an election curiosity, though: In the 2024 election, the last person to cast an in-person vote for president will be an Alaskan – specifically, an Alaskan on the Aleutian island of Adak:
On a desolate slab of island tundra in western Alaska, a resident of Adak will 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,” said city manager Layton Lockett. “But, you know, it’s still fun.”
When polls close in Adak, it’s 1 a.m. on the East Coast.
The United States is a big place. Roughly 3,000 miles separate the lower 48’s east and west coasts – and roughly 3,000 miles separate the easternmost part of Alaska’s panhandle, where Sitka and Juneau are found as well as Hyder, the easternmost settlement in Alaska, and the Aleutian island of Adak.
Note that there are U.S. possessions farther west than Adak, but while the people who live there are American citizens, they, like Puerto Ricans, don’t vote for president:
There are U.S. territories farther west than Alaska, but there’s no process in the Electoral College to allow residents in Guam, the northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands to vote for president, according to the National Archives.
Adak has an interesting history.
It’s not a commonly-taught piece of World War 2 history anymore, but the Aleutian island chain, then part of the Alaska Territory, included the only place where United States territory was invaded and occupied by Axis troops in that war. The islands of Attu and Kiska were invaded and occupied by Japanese troops, partly as a diversion from what Admiral Yamamoto was hoping would be the knock-out blow against the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Midway. That battle didn’t quite work out the way the Japanese admiral had intended, and Adak served as the staging area for U.S. forces who took back the other islands. After the war, the Navy placed an air station there, which is now closed, although there are rumors that the Navy may be considering re-opening it; given conditions in the western Pacific right now, that’s probably not a bad idea.
See Related: Four Chinese Warships Spotted Off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands
Japanese Fighters Close With, Use Flares to Warn Off Russian Spy Plane
By the time the polls in Adak close, we’ll probably already know the outcome. But it’s to the credit of the folks who live in that far-flung place that they go to their polling places anyway, and do their civic duty.
