Alaska’s U.S. Senate cliffhanger is getting tighter, and the state still has no declared winner.
Mary Peltola’s first-choice lead over Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan has fallen to 3,975 votes as election officials continue processing ballots. Now a major court ruling has added another consequential turn to an already tense count.
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews denied the Peltola campaign’s request for a centralized list identifying rejected absentee voters and the reasons their ballots were rejected. Matthews found the request unreasonable while election workers are actively counting ballots.
The dispute put ballot transparency, voter privacy, and the practical demands of an unfinished count on a collision course.
Peltola’s lawyers said the campaign wanted the records to help ensure that qualified voters’ ballots were counted. That is a serious interest in any close election, especially when the margin is narrow and absentee-ballot decisions could affect individual voters.
State lawyers countered that the working records contain confidential voter information. They also argued that compiling and producing a centralized list during the count would place an additional burden on election workers at the moment those workers are processing ballots.
According to KTUU, Matthews sided with the state and rejected the campaign’s request during the active count. His ruling followed a hearing held one day earlier and emphasized the timing pressure facing the Division of Elections.
Campaign and party observers still have a window into the absentee review process. They may watch absentee review boards, but they operate under confidentiality restrictions and cannot retain, copy, or record the observer reports.
That balance deserves close scrutiny. Voters should expect meaningful observation of ballot review, while election officials must protect confidential information and keep the count moving under established rules.
Conservatives should watch both sides of that line carefully. Privacy cannot become a blanket excuse for shielding election administration from legitimate observation, and transparency demands cannot ignore legal protections attached to voter records.
The campaign submitted its records request on October 27 and asked for production by November 5. The court dispute therefore landed directly inside the post-election counting window, when every staff hour and every ballot decision carries heightened public attention.
Meanwhile, the numbers themselves continue to move.
The official November 12 statewide results from the Alaska Division of Elections showed Peltola with 121,487 first-choice votes and Dan Sullivan with 117,512.
That puts the Democrat’s lead at 3,975 votes in the unfinished first-choice count. Neither of the two leading candidates has reached the majority required to avoid Alaska’s ranked-choice process.
Daniel Sullivan Junior, the other candidate with the Sullivan name, had 4,100 votes. Gerald Heikes stood at 5,426, leaving more than 9,500 first-choice ballots behind the two leading candidates.
Those lower-candidate totals matter because Alaska eliminates the lowest finisher and transfers ballots according to each voter’s next eligible ranking. The eventual two-candidate comparison can therefore differ from the first-choice scoreboard readers see today.
The official file also separates votes by method, allowing observers to see how Election Day, absentee, early, and questioned ballots contribute to the statewide total. It remains a moving preliminary record rather than a certified finish line.
The latest batch added 5,612 early, absentee, and Election Day ballots. Alaska Public Media reported that the update reduced Peltola’s advantage from 4,250 votes to 3,975.
That shrinking margin is crucial. Every new batch can alter the shape of the race before the remaining deadlines arrive and any ranked-choice tabulation begins.
Roughly 5,000 ballots in Wednesday’s update were absentee votes from state House districts covering the Republican-leaning Matanuska-Susitna Borough. The composition of each batch helps explain why a lead can expand one day and contract the next.
Both campaigns acknowledged that the count still had distance to run. Peltola’s team expected outstanding Anchorage and rural ballots to favor her, while Sullivan’s spokesman thanked election workers and said every Alaskan’s voice still needed to be heard.
There is another number drawing attention: Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.’s 4,100 votes.
Peltola’s current 3,975-vote lead is smaller than that total. The 4,100 votes matter because the threshold has been cited in separate federal litigation brought by the Trump administration over alleged voter confusion involving the two Sullivan names.
The federal case was dismissed, and that dismissal is being appealed.
Those 4,100 votes cannot simply be assigned to incumbent Dan Sullivan. The separate lawsuit raises a legal question about voter confusion; it does not establish that Daniel Sullivan Junior’s votes legally belong to the incumbent.
Still, the comparison shows why the litigation could remain significant in a race separated by fewer votes than the other Sullivan received. With the margin sitting at 3,975, the issue is no longer an abstract numerical footnote.
The calendar also matters.
Most mailed ballots were due to arrive by Friday, November 13. Overseas ballots may continue arriving through November 18, meaning the publicly reported totals can still change before the process reaches its next major stage.
November 18 is also the Division of Elections’ target date for ranked-choice tabulation if no candidate exceeds 50 percent of first-choice votes.
As of the official November 12 file, neither Peltola nor Sullivan had crossed that mark.
Peltola may sound confident, but the official count remains unfinished. Sullivan is within 4,000 votes, additional eligible ballots can still arrive, and ranked-choice tabulation may be required.
The court ruling means Peltola’s campaign will not receive the centralized rejected-ballot list it sought during the active count. Observers retain access under confidentiality rules, while election workers continue toward the remaining ballot deadlines.
For election watchdogs, the assignment is straightforward: follow the official totals, examine how rejected ballots are handled within the law, and resist claims that run ahead of the evidence.
Alaska is still counting. Peltola leads, Sullivan has gained ground in the latest update, and the legal disputes surrounding this race are still alive.
No winner has been called.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post Major Court Ruling Shakes Up Alaska Senate Cliffhanger As Peltola’s Edge Gets Thinner appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
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