An Alaska judge on Wednesday denied Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s attempt to force election officials to hand over data for rejected absentee ballots cast in her race against Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK).
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews weighed in on the Peltola campaign’s request for information on rejected absentee ballots in the razor-tight race, in which votes are still being counted. The Peltola campaign launched the lawsuit targeting the Alaska Division of Elections, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, and Director of Elections Carol Beecher on Friday.
Matthews said the request is “not reasonable” and that the data Peltola is seeking to collect is not considered public records. He also cited the time crunch election officials face in counting votes from last week’s election, saying that the state’s elections division must prioritize its primary responsibility. Nov. 18 is the target that election officials have for finishing the counting process and conducting ranked vote tabulations should no candidate win more than 50% of the first-choice votes.
“The Division is actively in the middle of counting ballots. It has active deadlines it must meet,” Matthews wrote. “The Division asserts its staff is actively working long hours to accomplish its fundamental responsibility — administering elections. The timing of the Campaign’s request could simply not be worse.”
Peltola’s campaign sought the list election officials keep of rejected absentee ballots and the reasons for the rejections, arguing they wanted to ensure all valid ballots are counted.
State prosecutors pushed back, arguing that would violate voter privacy, and that the data is not public records because they contain confidential information and are “ephemeral working documents that are not meant for preservation.”
The superior court judge’s decision in favor of the state comes as Peltola leads Sullivan by 4,250 votes as of Wednesday evening.
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The Senate campaign has attracted close scrutiny due to concerns that the Peltola campaign and national Democratic operatives recruited a second Dan Sullivan to run as a Republican to confuse voters and siphon votes from the incumbent GOP senator in the tight race.
Days before the Nov. 3 election, Peltola’s former campaign manager told the New York Times that she and others on her boss’s team worked to recruit the second Dan Sullivan with the goal of confusing voters.