Judge weighs lawsuit brought by Peltola campaign over absentee ballots in Alaska's US Senate race

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A state judge said Tuesday that he expects to issue a swift decision in a lawsuit filed by the campaign of Alaska Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola, which is seeking a list of absentee voters whose ballots have been rejected in one of the most closely watched races of the midterm elections.

Peltola's campaign also said it wants to know the reasons for the rejections and said its intent is to ensure that all qualified voters have their ballots counted. Attorneys for the state say the information requested would violate voter privacy.

The campaign sued Friday, three days after the ranked choice election in which Peltola and two-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan are the main contenders. Absentee, early in-person and other ballots are still being tallied.

Alaska's is one of two U.S. Senate races, along with Mississippi's, that remain too early to call .

In arguments before state Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews, Peltola attorney Abha Khanna said the campaign isn’t seeking to disrupt the ongoing ballot counting process and it has seen no cause for concerns.

“As far as we can tell, the absentee ballot review process is going incredibly smoothly and we plan to keep it that way,” she said.

But Khanna argued the information the campaign seeks is a matter of public record and is in line with what campaign observers have access to in locations where absentee review boards are meeting. The campaign wants access to that information in a more centralized way, she said.

Absentee review boards meet at the state Division of Elections' regional offices, and campaigns and parties can have observers on hand to watch the process. State law includes provisions for challenging absentee ballots if there is “good reason to suspect” that a challenged voter is ineligible to cast a ballot.

In a court filing, attorneys for the state said daily reports generated by the division with lists of absentee ballots to be reviewed are not public records because they contain confidential information and are “ephemeral working documents that are not meant for preservation.”

The final word on whether to accept or reject an absentee ballot comes from the state review board, which goes over the work of the regional absentee review boards.

The version of the report that observers, such as those affiliated with the campaigns, receive does not include as much confidential information but does include home addresses that many voters seek to keep private, said Michaela Thompson, who manages absentee ballot review boards for the elections division.

The state’s “old, inflexible” voter database cannot produce a report that excludes confidential addresses, she said.

The observers must sign confidentiality agreements and cannot keep, copy or record information in the report, she said. No absentee ballot is rejected until after the state review board process finishes and the results are certified, she said.

Assistant Attorney General Margaret Paton Walsh told the judge that state law sets out timelines for notifying voters if their absentee ballot is rejected. Voters can check the status of their ballot through an online system, but the information isn't posted until at least 10 days after certification, she said.

It doesn't make sense that a campaign would have access to that information before a voter does, she said.

Alaska does not have a process that allows voters to fix problems on absentee ballots that can cause them to be rejected, such as forgetting to sign the envelope.

The state accepts ballots up to 15 days after general elections from overseas voters, making Nov. 18 the final day to receive them. That also is the target for the Division of Elections to conduct ranked vote tabulations if no candidate wins more than 50% of the first-choice votes.

The division has announced vote counts for Tuesday and Friday this week, with the potential for additional days, as well as the Nov. 18 count.

An attorney for Sullivan's campaign, Stacey Stone, filed a motion in support of the state. But the campaign said that if the judge ordered any production of data or documents, it's asking that such information be made “equally and simultaneously available to all candidates in the affected race.”

Matthews said he planned to issue a written ruling within a day of Tuesday's hearing.