Overview:
Newly counted votes show the Yup’ik Democrat leading GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, by 4,250 votes
Kevin Abourezk
ICT
Mary Peltola’s historic race for U.S. Senate in Alaska could be decided within two weeks.
Peltola, Yup’ik, was about 1 percentage point short of the majority needed to win the race outright with about 84 percent of the vote counted as of Wednesday morning. The Democrat led her opponent, Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, by about 4,250 votes.
Peltola’s campaign said Wednesday in a message to supporters that it was excited to see newly counted votes pushing Peltola further ahead.
“This could be the turning point we’ve been waiting for,” the campaign said.
The final absentee ballots mailed back from outside the U.S. are accepted as late as Nov. 18, 15 days after Election Day.
Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system requires that if neither candidate wins a majority, the race will proceed to ranked choice tabulation. With neither Peltola or Sullivan having a majority, ranked choice tabulation will take place on Nov. 18, and the state’s “target date” for certifying the election results is Nov. 25.
“With tens of thousands of ballots still to be counted, there’s a long way to go before every Alaskan’s voice is heard,” Sullivan said in a statement Wednesday. “We thank the Division of Elections for their hard work and look forward to a complete and accurate count.”
The contest dominated headlines ahead of Tuesday’s election and attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice. With less than two weeks before Election Day, the agency sued at President Donald Trump’s direction seeking to block certification of the race if Sen. Sullivan loses.
The lawsuit cited potential confusion with another Sullivan on the ballot, retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, but the department has appealed.
Last week, the New York Times published an analysis of ranked-choice ballots cast in Alaska, showing that Peltola likely would earn more votes than Sullivan should the race advance to ranked-choice tabulation. Each Alaska voter got to choose up to two candidates out of the four Senate candidates on the ballot, with each choice ranked as the voter’s first or second choice.
Two-thirds of Daniel J. Sullivan’s supporters ranked a second choice, with most of those voters supporting Ms. Peltola in subsequent rounds — an indication that they were not intending to vote for Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, as voters who chose the incumbent senator first rarely ranked Ms. Peltola second.
Even after votes are counted in Alaska, the results are likely to be challenged.
In its Wednesday message, Peltola’s campaign said, “What’s also important to remember here is that Donald Trump and the entire D.C. establishment are already attacking the results. The moment this race is called, we need to be ready to defend our position.”
On Tuesday, a state judge said that he expects to issue a swift decision in a lawsuit filed by the Peltola campaign which is seeking a list of absentee voters whose ballots have been rejected.
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. 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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
