The controversy-marked effort to repeal Alaska’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system is headed to the Alaska Supreme Court.
The group challenging the initiative’s status on this year’s ballot filed an appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court last week, arguing that a Superior Court judge was wrong when she ruled that the Division of Election’s seemingly preferential treatment of the initiative was within the law.
The challenge rests on the Division of Election’s decision to allow the sponsors, Alaskans for Honest Elections, to retrieve dozens of booklets that had been fraudulently notarized, fix them and return them after the deadline to appear on the 2024 ballot. Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin cleared the Division of Elections of wrongdoing in a summary judgment order, finding that initiatives should be given broad latitude to reach the ballot.
Following a subsequent week-and-a-half trial, Rankin disqualified more than two dozen petition booklets, finding they didn’t meet the legal standard to be counted over errors such as unattended booklets, booklets leaving the circulator’s possession and retracted statements, but stopped short of disqualifying the initiative outright.
The Division of Elections recalculated the signature counts, finding that it still met the threshold to appear on the ballot.
The Alaska Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case on an expedited basis, with an oral argument scheduled for Aug. 22.
The group behind the voter initiative, Alaskans for Honest Elections, has been accused of wrongdoing in collecting signatures and campaigning, landing it with hefty fines and other legal challenges. It and its organizers face more than $90,000 in fines related to late, incomplete and misleading campaign disclosures. One of the most serious accusations against the group is that it used a fake “church” to filter big-ticket contributions to the campaign without disclosing their true source.
Alaska’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system was approved by voters in 2020 and used for the first time in 2022. It saw the election of Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola in a special election, and in the state races, several moderate Republicans prevailed against right-wing Republicans. Those outcomes have continued to chafe hard-line Republicans who had long enjoyed stronger control over the elections through the semi-closed partisan primaries, where a smaller and more conservative pool of voters could shape their district’s representation.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
