House candidate sues Division of Elections over ballots

A last-minute change to Alaska’s general election ballot was the subject of a whirlwind lawsuit by candidate Alyse Galvin. Galvin, who is running as a Non-Partisan for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by Don Young, sued the Alaska Division of Elections and Election Director Gail Fenumiai over the decision to remove candidate voter affiliation from the ballots. Galvin asked the DOE to print ballots to replace the 800,000 already printed.

Less than a week before ballots were required to be mailed to overseas Alaskan voters, the DOE announced that it had removed candidate voter affiliation from the ballots. So, instead of including the fact that Galvin is registered as a Non-Partisan, the sample ballots the DOE published last week simply list her as the Democratic nominee, an alteration which Galvin’s lawsuit says both undermines Alaskans’ constitutional right to associate with a political party and could “imminently” harm her campaign.

On Thursday, Superior Court Judge Jennifer Henderson sided with Galvin, ordering that the DOE stop printing ballots. Henderson determined that “Plaintiff has shown that immediate and irreparable injury will occur to Plaintiff if Defendants are not enjoined from printing ballots that do not include candidate’s voter registration affiliation.” Throughout their campaigns, both Galvin and Al Gross, who is running for Dan Sullivan’s U.S. Senate seat, have emphasized that they are independent thinkers who will put Alaska before partisan politics. Because the Democratic primary is open, a candidate can procure the Democratic nomination without being a Democrat, as both Galvin and Gross did. However, Galvin has been registered as a NonPartisan for about a decade. “While Galvin won the Alaska Democratic Primary, she does not self-identify as a Democrat, and that she is Non-Partisan is a critical aspect of her identity and her political platform,” the suit reads.

A further concern, according to the suit, was that removing Galvin’s voter affiliation will misleadingly imply that she identifies as a Democrat, which is not only untrue but could cost her votes. Not only did both Galvin’s campaign center around her political independence, but the majority —58 percent— of Alaskan voters are registered as NonPartisan or Undeclared. In contrast, only 13 percent self-identify as Democrats. “Defendants made this eleventh hour change to inappropriately affect the outcome of the election by misleading and confusing Alaskan voters and depriving them of essential information,” reads Galvin’s suit.

Plaintiffs alleged that, because the Democratic primary is open, it is required that the ballot includes voter affiliations, which typically appear in parentheses after a candidate’s name, so as to avoid confusion.

While Judge Henderson initially agreed with Galvin, she ultimately determined that the reprinting of ballots under such immense time pressure would cause more harm to the State than the change does to Galvin. Therefore, she ruled, the ballots could be sent out as printed, a decision which Plaintiffs appealed but the Supreme Court upheld on Friday.