Alaska judge rules a request by Peltola campaign for ballot data in Senate race is ‘not reasonable’
Alaska judge rules a request by Peltola campaign for ballot data in Senate race is ‘not reasonable’
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska judge ruled Wednesday that a request by Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign for a list of absentee voters whose ballots have been rejected is “not reasonable,” particularly given the time crunch election officials face as they continue counting ballots from last week’s election.
Ballots are still being tallied in the ranked vote election, in which Peltola and two-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan are the main contenders. Alaska’s is the only Senate race in the country that remained too early to call.
The state accepts ballots up to 15 days after general elections from overseas voters, making Nov. 18 the final day to receive them. That date is also the Division of Elections’ target for conducting ranked vote tabulations if no candidate wins more than 50% of the first-choice votes.
Attorneys for Peltola’s campaign last Friday sued state elections officials, seeking a list of voters whose absentee ballots have been rejected and the reasons for the rejections. They said their intent was to ensure that all qualified voters have their ballots counted.
But attorneys for the state said the information requested would violate voter privacy. They also said producing such a list from a voter database would constitute an “electronic service or product” that under state law may not take priority over an agency’s main responsibilities.
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews, in a written ruling, said that “in theory” records from the voter database could be redacted and produced in a way that would allow their release. But he said the division is not required to disclose the records requested by the campaign because they “cannot reasonably be produced at this juncture, nor redacted of confidential information.”
The division has deadlines to meet and says its staff is working long hours to accomplish the agency’s “fundamental responsibility” of administering elections, he wrote.
“The timing of the Campaign’s request could simply not be worse,” Matthews wrote.
An email seeking comment from one of the law firms representing Peltola’s campaign was not immediately returned Wednesday, which was a holiday. The state Department of Law, which represented the Division of Elections, in a statement said it was pleased with Matthews’ decision.
Abha Khanna, an attorney for Peltola’s campaign, said during arguments Tuesday before Matthews the campaign wasn’t seeking to disrupt the ballot counting process. She said the absentee ballot review process was going “incredibly smoothly.”
But Khanna argued the information sought is a matter of public record and in line with what campaign observers have access to in locations where absentee review boards are meeting. The campaign wanted access to that information in a more centralized way, she said.
Attorneys for the state have argued that reports generated by the division with lists of ballots to be reviewed during the absentee ballot review process are not public records because they contain confidential information and are “ephemeral working documents that are not meant for preservation.”
Michaela Thompson, who oversees the absentee ballot review boards for the division, said in an affidavit that the version of the report received by observers of the review process — including those affiliated with the campaigns — does not include as much confidential information but does include home addresses that many voters seek to keep private.
The observers sign confidentiality agreements and cannot keep, copy or record information in the report, she said.
The division’s “old, inflexible” database cannot produce a report that excludes confidential addresses, meaning the agency would have to work with a vendor to create a more tailored report, Thompson said.
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