Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign sued state election officials Friday for immediate access to records identifying absentee ballots rejected in the midterm election.
Peltola and Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan remain about 640 votes apart, according to the latest Associated Press tally with around 74 percent of the votes counted, in a race that remains too close to call.
A group called Alaskans for Mary has sued the state Division of Elections to disclose, “without further delay,” the names of Alaskans who sent absentee ballots the agency turned down, according to a complaint filed on Nov. 6 in the Superior Court for the State of Alaska.
Accusing state elections officials of having “constructively denied and obstructed” the Peltola campaign’s request for public records pertaining to rejected ballots, the group said in the filing that the Nov. 18 certification deadline is fast approaching and any delay in releasing the records costs Peltola “the opportunity to help ensure that qualified voters have their ballots counted.”
The filing argues that without prompt access, Alaskans for Mary cannot verify that ballots are properly counted or determine whether Peltola supporters’ ballots were wrongly rejected.
Mailed ballots and those flown in from remote communities in Alaska could decide the race and will determine whether Democrats can build on their 54-seat majority in the upper chamber as part of their sweeping midterm victory.
In response to the lawsuit, the Alaska Department of Law said the absentee ballot information Peltola’s campaign seeks is preliminary and that the Division of Elections has long treated such data as confidential.
“Releasing preliminary information in the manner sought by the lawsuit would create additional burdens during ballot processing and could delay the timely counting of votes,” the department said in a statement.
“The Division has protected this information for years and will ask the court to protect it too.”
The department said authorized observers may view certain daily records under confidentiality agreements, but Alaska law does not require election officials to release the information the Peltola campaign is seeking.
Alaskans for Mary said on Nov. 5 that the campaign is confident Peltola will win once all the votes are counted, citing preliminary vote data showing Peltola has won 56.6 percent of early in-person votes and 56.7 percent of mail-in ballots.
“Tens of thousands of early votes and absentee ballots are still outstanding, and the data shows that these will break for Mary and extend her lead,” the campaign said.
Sen. Sullivan’s campaign said in a Nov. 4 memo that, under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, their candidate is likely to win.
“If the ranked-choice voting tabulation took place today of the votes that we have in hand right now, Senator Dan Sullivan would defeat Mary Peltola 105,037 to 104,709, a margin of 328 votes,” the campaign said.
Under Alaska’s ranked-choice rules, voters’ second and third picks will be added to Sen. Sullivan’s or Peltola’s tallies since no candidate won more than 50 percent of first-choice votes, the incumbent’s campaign said.
“The 8,404 ballots for the two candidates who cannot win, Gerald Heikes and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., are eliminated and their second and third choices are added to the totals of Senator Sullivan and Peltola,” the campaign memo states.
“Heikes voters who ranked anyone else break for Dan 71 percent to 29 percent, and that round decides the race.”
Meanwhile, an investigation is underway into what Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and a recent New York Times report alleged to be a plot by Peltola’s campaign to recruit the incumbent Republican senator’s namesake challenger—a retired teacher from Petersburg named Dan J. Sullivan—and other spoiler candidates onto the ballot to hurt Sen. Sullivan’s chances at reelection.
Sen. Sullivan’s campaign has called the alleged plot “the biggest election cheating scandal in the history of Alaska.”
Peltola’s campaign has denied involvement in any purported spoiler candidate recruitment scheme.
President Donald Trump has weighed in on the Alaska Senate race, saying in a Thursday post on Truth Social that votes for the Petersburg Sullivan should be given to the “REAL Dan Sullivan.”
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