Peltola campaign sues Alaska elections officials over rejected ballot records

Mary Peltola's Senate campaign is taking Alaska's election officials to court. The Democratic candidate's team, Alaskans for Mary, filed suit on Nov 6 demanding the immediate release of records showing which absentee ballots got tossed in the Nov 3 vote — and why.

The clock is the whole story here. Peltola and Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan are knotted up in a race separated by roughly 600 votes, with ballots from far-flung communities still trickling in. Alaska will keep accepting ballots until Nov 18, so every envelope from a remote village could tip the thing.

The lawsuit names the Alaska Division of Elections, Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom and Elections Director Carol Beecher. According to the campaign, it asked for the records on Oct 27 and again on Nov 4 under the Alaska Public Records Act, got silence, and was then denied immediate access. The filing also seeks a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to force the records out fast, arguing that with counting and certification already underway, there's no time to spare. Without prompt access, the campaign says, it can't check whether ballots are being counted correctly or whether Peltola backers had their votes wrongly rejected.

The state isn't budging. The Department of Law, which represents Dahlstrom and the Division of Elections, said the division has treated these records as confidential for years and that Alaska law doesn't require handing them over. Releasing preliminary information, the statement said, would add work during ballot processing and could slow the vote count — and the division will ask a court to keep the records protected.

Sullivan's campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Nationally, Democrats already seized control of the Senate in the midterms, holding a 54-seat majority in the 100-member chamber. Alaska and Mississippi are the last two races standing, and they'll decide whether Democrats pad that majority further.

For now, the battle is Alaska-shaped: a razor-thin margin, a pile of mail-in and fly-in ballots, and a court fight over who gets to see the rejected ones before the counting stops.