'Not Reasonable': Alaska Judge Rejects Peltola Campaign Request For Absentee Ballot Data

Detailed summary

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska judge ruled Wednesday that a request by Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign for a list of absentee voters whose ballots have…

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska judge ruled Wednesday that a request by Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign for a list of absentee voters whose ballots have been rejected is “not reasonable,” particularly given the time crunch election officials face as they continue counting ballots from last week’s election.

Ballots are still being tallied in the ranked vote election, in which Peltola and two-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan are the main contenders. Alaska’s is the only Senate race in the country that remained too early to call.

Attorneys for Peltola’s campaign last Friday sued state elections officials, seeking a list of voters whose absentee ballots have been rejected and the reasons for the rejections. They said their intent was to ensure that all qualified voters have their ballots counted.

But attorneys for the state said the information requested would violate voter privacy. They also said producing such a list from a voter database would constitute an “electronic service or product” that under state law may not take priority over an agency’s main responsibilities.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews, in a written ruling, said that “in theory” records from the voter database could be redacted and produced in a way that would allow their release. But he said the division is not required to disclose the records requested by the campaign because they “cannot reasonably be produced at this juncture, nor redacted of confidential information.”

The division has deadlines to meet and says its staff is working long hours to accomplish the agency’s “fundamental responsibility” of administering elections, he wrote.

“The timing of the Campaign’s request could simply not be worse,” Matthews wrote.

An email seeking comment from one of the law firms representing Peltola’s campaign was not immediately returned Wednesday, which was a holiday.

Abha Khanna, an attorney for Peltola’s campaign, said during arguments Tuesday before Matthews the campaign wasn’t…

Opening of the article, excerpted from HuffPost. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.