Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola was denied access to records about absentee ballots rejected during Alaska’s ongoing count. A new batch of votes released Wednesday night also trimmed her lead in the state’s still-undecided Senate race.
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews ruled against the Peltola campaign’s request, calling it unreasonable while election officials are focused on counting ballots from the 2026 general election. The state’s Division of Elections, he said, does not have the capacity to produce the requested report from its voter registration database.
Matthews wrote that the timing of the request could hardly be worse. Even if it might have been reasonable at another time of year, he said, it was neither reasonable nor required during the current peak of election work.
Peltola’s campaign filed suit last week seeking details about which absentee ballots had been flagged for rejection and the reasons for those decisions. Campaign attorney Abha Kelly told the court the process was running smoothly and that the campaign was not seeking confidential information or trying to interfere with the count. She said the request would bring together information that election observers could already access in scattered form.
State attorneys argued that the records were not public and that releasing them could infringe on voters’ privacy. Assistant Attorney General Margaret Paton-Walsh said people who vote absentee may not want their mistakes exposed publicly. The state also argued that preparing a tailored report would place a substantial burden on election staff.
Matthews said the dispute concerned access to public records under the Public Records Act, not which candidate had won. Sullivan’s campaign was permitted to join the case.
With about 86% of expected votes counted, more than 248,000 ballots had been tallied. Peltola had 121,487 first-choice votes, or 48.9%, compared with 117,512 votes, or 47.3%, for Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan. Her margin stood at 3,975 votes.
Neither candidate has more than half the vote, so the race is expected to proceed to ranked-choice tabulation once absentee counting ends, currently projected around Nov. 18. Certification is expected Nov. 25.
The other candidates could affect the outcome. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. had 4,100 votes, and Gerald Heikes had 5,426—both totals larger than the gap between the leading candidates. Under Alaska’s ranked-choice system, votes may shift to voters’ next preferences as lower-ranking candidates are eliminated.
A ballot measure to repeal the ranked-choice system was also still too close to call more than a week after Election Day, with the repeal effort trailing 52.5% to 47.5%.
