Alaska Judge Rules Against Mary Peltola Over Ballot Request - Newsweek

A judge in Alaska has ruled against Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola's campaign in its efforts to obtain records identifying absentee ballots that have been rejected, saying the request was "not reasonable."

Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews ruled on Wednesday that state election officials were not required to provide the information, as the request could not reasonably be fulfilled while they were working to process ballots from last week's midterm elections.

"The timing of the Campaign's request could simply not be worse," Matthews said in his ruling.

The judge also raised concerns about voter privacy, saying the state could not reasonably redact confidential information from the records before producing them at this time.

Peltola's campaign filed a lawsuit last Friday seeking information about rejected absentee ballots and the reasons for their rejection, arguing that it wanted to ensure all eligible votes are counted.

Newsweek has contacted Peltola's campaign for comment via email outside regular working hours.

The U.S. Senate race in Alaska is the only one that has not been called, with Peltola currently narrowly ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. About 86 percent of votes have been counted as of early Thursday.

Alaska allows absentee ballots mailed from within the U.S. to arrive up to 10 days after Election Day, while ballots sent from overseas can arrive up to 15 days after. This means election officials can continue receiving ballots for two weeks after the election.

In its lawsuit, the Peltola campaign had sought to obtain the initial reports of rejected ballots provided to election observers, arguing that the information was public record.

Peltola attorney Abha Khanna said they did not want to disrupt the absentee ballot counting process, saying it appeared to be "going incredibly smoothly and we plan to keep it that way."

But the state argued that the reports contain confidential information, including addresses, and that initial decisions to reject ballots are preliminary and may change after review by the state review board before the final results are certified.

Information about the number of absentee ballots rejected and the reasons for rejection are typically released weeks after the election results are certified.

The last date that overseas absentee ballots can be received is November 18, which is also the date that the Division of Elections plans to conduct ranked-choice tabulations if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes.

Both Peltola and Sullivan are currently below the 50 percent threshold.

Alaska's U.S. Senate race has been mired in controversy after another candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., who shares a name with the Republican incumbent, entered the race. Republicans accused Democrats of recruiting him to run in an effort to confuse voters and split support for the incumbent.

Sullivan Jr. has received about 1.6 percent of the vote. If all those votes had instead gone to the Republican incumbent, he would be ahead of Peltola. However, it is unclear how many votes for the other Sullivan were cast out of confusion, as protest votes or in genuine support of the candidate.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and Shakeema Edwards.