Donald Trump won’t be the only Republican-backed felon on Alaska’s ballot this year.
An Anchorage Superior Court judge on Tuesday denied a legal bid to remove convicted felon Eric Hafner from the race for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat, rejecting arguments that the Division of Elections improperly added him to the ballot after two Republicans dropped out. On Thursday, the Superior Court’s decision to keep Hafner on the ballot was upheld at an emergency appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court.
The case had been brought by the Alaska Democratic Party, which argued that state law only references moving a fifth-place candidate into the general election. Hafner finished sixth in the primary, securing just 467 votes out of the more than 108,000 cast.
The Alaska Republican Party intervened in the case, arguing that Hafner — a perennial candidate who has run in many states and under different party labels from a New York federal prison where he’s serving a 20-year sentence for threatening public officials — should stay on the ballot. Hafner is running as a Democrat in this election.
[MORE: Judge’s order denying the motion to remove Eric Hafner from the ballot]
The case centered on changes made to Alaska’s election laws in 2020 when voters approved the move to open primaries and ranked-choice voting. Under the system, the top four finishers in the open primary advance to the general election. The rules governing what happens if candidates drop out following the primary allow the fifth-place candidate from the primary to appear on the general election ballot, but they don’t mention anything else.
Attorneys for the Alaska Democratic Party argued in court on Monday that it should be interpreted strictly and that Judge Ian Wheeles should rule that the Division of Elections had no authority to add Hafner to the ballot.
Attorneys for the Alaska Republican Party and the Division of Elections, overseen by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom (who was one of the two Republicans to drop out of the race for the U.S. House), argued that the language in the law shouldn’t be followed strictly and that it should be seen as guidance. They argued that under the spirit of open primaries and ranked-choice voting — which were designed to increase voter choice — the law should be interpreted to allow the most choice to voters.
Judge Wheeles, who Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointed, ultimately agreed.
“This is an absurd result,” he wrote of the Alaska Democratic Party’s suggestion that only three candidates should advance after two Republicans dropped out, “but the necessary logical result of Plaintiffs’ reading of the statute. That is clearly not what the voters intended when Ballot Measure 2 was enacted. The term ‘fifth’ is exemplary, not exhaustive.”
Why it matters
The Alaska Republican Party’s move to support Hafner’s bid is strategic.
Conservative Republicans have struggled to adapt to open primaries and ranked-choice voting, which has opened more lanes for moderate Republicans and Democrats — such as U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola — to run and win. This year, conservative Republicans have approached ranked-choice voting by attempting to treat open primaries like the old semi-closed partisan primaries by pressuring Republicans to drop out and consolidate support around a single conservative candidate.
The thinking seems to be that multiple candidates from the same party will dilute that party’s chance of winning, even though ranked-choice voting allows voters to back multiple candidates from the same party. The 2022 elections saw that very thing play out in several legislative races, including two Republican candidates who overcame first-round deficits and won once votes were reallocated under the ranked-choice voting system.
In this case, keeping Hafner on the ballot is seen as a strategic move to confuse Democratic voters and undercut Peltola’s support. However, the whole issue could be moot if Peltola repeats her performance in the primary election, where she secured more than 50% of the vote. That’s enough to ensure she’d win the race outright.
Note: This story has been updated to reflect the Alaska Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Superior Court decision to keep Eric Hafner on the general election ballot.
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.
