Alaska Anti-Ranked Choice Voting Ballot Measure Challenge

Lawsuit filed by three Alaska voters against the State of Alaska Division of Elections (the Division), Director of the Alaska Division of Elections Carol Beecher and Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom (R) challenging the certification of ballot measure 22AKHE, which seeks to repeal a 2020 ballot measure that implemented ranked choice voting and open primaries in the state. In Alaska, petitioned ballot measures are certified and added to the state’s ballots when they gather a certain number of signatures supporting the measure. Any signatures added to a petition booklet are required to be witnessed by the circulator who certifies the booklet. 

The plaintiffs argue that the sponsors of ballot measure 22AKHE violated state law by leaving petition booklets intentionally unattended in various places of business and later instructing circulators to falsely certify the booklets and their signatures. The plaintiffs claim that the Division received several complaints regarding unattended petition booklets and repeatedly warned the sponsors that their actions were illegal and would result in the disqualification of these booklets. Despite this, the Division later offered the sponsors an opportunity to cure individual disqualified booklets, which the plaintiffs claim was unlawful. The plaintiffs allege that ballot measure 22AKHE does not meet the threshold of signatures to appear on the ballot when these challenged signatures are removed from the count. The plaintiffs ask the court to invalidate all petition booklets that were improperly certified and ban ballot measure 22AKHE from appearing on the state’s 2024 ballots.

STATUS: Three Alaska voters filed this complaint on April 2, 2024. The State of Alaska Division of Elections, Director of the Alaska Division of Elections Carol Beecher and Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom have not responded yet.

Last updated: April 3, 2024 12:44 pm EST