When the third- and fourth-place finishers in Alaska’s open primary for the U.S. House dropped out, the Alaska Division of Elections moved the fifth- and sixth-place candidates into the spots for the general election. That meant a man serving a 20-year sentence in a New York federal prison for threatening public officials got a place in what’s expected to be a hotly contested race between Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola and Nick Begich III, the lone Republican remaining in the race.
Eric Hafner, who has never visited Alaska, is running as a Democrat and received 0.43% of the primary election vote.
The problem, as lawyers for the Alaska Democratic Party told a Superior Court judge today, is that state law only specifically mentions moving a fifth-place candidate up. They argue that the Division of Elections, which Republicans oversee, wrongly added Hafner to the general election and that he should be removed before ballots are sent out.
Alaska’s election laws were overhauled by voters in 2020 when they approved the move to open primaries where the top four finishers advance to the general election, which is conducted with ranked-choice voting. While some other systems refer to replacing candidates with the “next-most votes,” Alaska’s law explicitly says “fifth-place candidate” and does not refer to a sixth-place candidate.
“This is an extremely simple case because Alaska law is very clear,” said attorney David Fox. “The top four candidates from the primary election advance to the general election, and if one of them withdraws or drops out, they’re replaced by, quote, ‘the candidate who received the fifth-most votes in the primary election.’ Mr. Hafner received the sixth-most votes in the primary election, so (the Division of Elections) has no authority to place him on the ballot.”
Fox said that on those grounds alone, the Division of Elections should be barred from sending out ballots with Hafner in the race alongside Peltola, Begich and Alaska Independence Party candidate John Wayne Howe. Peltola finished the primary with 50.9% of the vote, Begich with 26.6%, and Howe with 0.57%. The two Republicans who dropped out, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and Matthew Salisbury, received 19.9% and 0.6%, respectively.
He added that Hafner could also be disqualified because his federal conviction means he cannot move to and reside in Alaska, as required under federal election rules if he somehow wins the election. Federal election rules allow candidates to run in states they don’t live in but require winners to live in the state they serve.
The state has primarily focused on the latter argument, arguing in a brief filed on Friday that it’s possible that Hafner could be released in time to satisfy the residence requirement.
“However unlikely these scenarios may be, the court cannot say — particularly without evidence — whether Mr. Hafner might be released, pardoned, successful on appeal, or otherwise free to become an inhabitant of Alaska some other way,” the brief argued.
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Ian Wheeles also seemed skeptical that Hafner could be rejected on residency grounds, noting that such a challenge to his candidacy could have been lodged at the filing deadline earlier this year. However, he seemed more open to the arguments around the Division of Elections’ decision to allow the sixth-place candidate to move up.
On that front, the state argued that while the letter of the law says only the fifth-place candidate may move up, the spirit of the open primary and ranked-choice voting system calls for voters to have the most choices and should be interpreted to ensure four candidates move onto the general election.
Judge Wheeles said he would have a decision on the case by Tuesday.
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.
