Alaska continues counting U.S. Senate ballots ahead of looming deadline

(The Center Square) - Election officials in Alaska continue to count ballots for the state’s contentious U.S. Senate race as the deadline for ballot receipt approaches on Nov. 18.

The race between Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic candidate Mary Peltola is razor-thin with Alaska’s deadline to receive overseas ballots set for Nov. 18. If Peltola wins the race, Democrats will have a 56-44 seat majority in the U.S. Senate.

Much of the race has been focused on the state’s ranked choice voting process. Under ranked choice voting, if a candidate does not receive more than 50% of the vote with all ballots counted, officials conduct tabulations to determine a winner.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Peltola campaign's request to produce a list of absentee voters whose ballots were rejected in the tabulation process.

“Even if the request were otherwise considered reasonable outside the peak election time of year, it is simply not reasonable or required right now,” Superior Court Judge Matthew Thomas wrote in a ruling.

Peltola’s campaign argued the lawsuit is an attempt to ensure all ballots in the state are counted and verified for the intended candidate in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

“Each hour and each day that Defendants deny Plaintiff the requested records to which it is entitled costs Plaintiff the opportunity to help ensure that qualified voters have their ballots counted,” lawyers for Peltola's campaign wrote in a filing to the court.

Peltola’s campaign did not respond to several requests for comment on the lawsuit or the state of the race. Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, criticized the Peltola campaign’s lawsuit.

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He said the effort to access absentee ballots is in order to challenge their exclusion in official vote totals as the election is being certified.

“They could challenge the ballots that were rejected and try to get them counted,” Snead told The Center Square in an interview. “I think that's what they were trying to prepare for.”

Alaska’s geography makes for a prolonged election period, Snead admitted. However, he criticized the ranked choice voting tabulation process for delaying results.

“If this was an ordinary election, you'd be able to call the race. Unless it was extraordinarily close,” Snead said. “We had to wait to see how all of the people who voted in the second place slot. We have to wait for them to actually do the tabulation and then we'll see.”

Rachel Hutchinson, the deputy director of research and policy at Fair Vote, said ranked choice voting is a viable option for election administration across the country. She pointed to a race in Maine’s second congressional district that was called under ranked choice voting.

“[Ranked choice voting] has allowed more voters to vote for their favorite candidates without ‘wasting their vote,’” Hutchinson wrote. “Voters can rank third-party, independent, and/or write-in candidates, and still weigh in between the Democrat and Republican.”

Election officials across the state continue to count ballots and prepare for a post-election tabulation to determine a winner. The Alaska Division of Elections did not respond to The Center Square’s request for comment.