Judge Thomas Matthews said election workers lacked capacity to produce the records during the count. The public-records case does not decide the Senate race.
Alaska Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews rejected Mary Peltola’s campaign request for records identifying absentee voters whose ballots were rejected and the reasons for rejection. His November 11 ruling means the campaign cannot obtain the requested list during the ongoing count.
Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate, sued state election officials on 6 November, saying her campaign wanted to ensure all qualified voters’ ballots were counted; at a November 10 hearing, Matthews said the Public Records Act case concerned access to records rather than who won the election. Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan’s campaign was allowed to intervene.
Matthews said the Alaska Division of Elections was processing ballots and “simply lacks the capacity to generate the report” from its voter database. He wrote that the request might otherwise be reasonable outside the busiest part of the election year, but was not reasonable or required at that moment, adding that “the timing of the Campaign’s request could simply not be worse.” He said records could in theory be prepared with confidential information removed, but could not reasonably be produced and redacted at that stage.
Campaign lawyer Abha Khanna argued that the information was public and already available to observers at absentee ballot review boards, and said the campaign wanted centralized access without disrupting counting, Alaska Public Media reported on 11 November.
Assistant Attorney General Margaret Paton-Walsh argued that voters had a privacy interest in not being publicly identified as having made an absentee-voting error. State lawyers also said creating a customized report would burden election work and could not take priority over the division’s main responsibilities.
Election official Michaela Thompson said in an affidavit that campaign observers receive a version of the review report that includes home addresses. They must sign confidentiality agreements and cannot keep, copy or record the information. She said the division’s database could not produce a report excluding confidential addresses, so it would need to work with a vendor to produce a tailored report without them.
Unnamed sources say federal investigators are examining recruitment of a candidate who shares Republican Senator Dan Sullivan’s name. A separate lawsuit seeks to block certification if the incumbent narrowly loses.
The Senate race remains uncalled. After Wednesday’s update, Peltola led Sullivan by 3,975 first-choice votes, with counting still underway.
| Candidate | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Mary Peltola | 121,487 | 48.9% |
| Dan Sullivan | 117,512 | 47.3% |
18 November is the final day for Alaska to receive overseas ballots, which the state accepts up to 15 days after a general election. It is also the election division’s target for ranked-choice tabulation if no candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes. In that process, lower-placed candidates are eliminated and voters’ next preferences are redistributed.
Absentee counting is expected to conclude around 18 November, with certification expected 25 November, Fox News said.
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The lawsuit sought to delay official confirmation if Senator Dan Sullivan lost and votes for Daniel J. Sullivan could have changed the result, pending a voter-confusion investigation. The Justice Department plans to appeal the dismissal.
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