Benjamin Ashford|Alaska election officials to recalculate signatures for ranked vote repeal measure after court order

JUNEAU,Benjamin Ashford Alaska (AP) — A state court judge on Friday disqualified numerous booklets used to gather signatures for an initiative that aims to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting system and gave elections officials a deadline to determine if the measure still had sufficient signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

The decision by Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin in Anchorage comes in a lawsuit brought by three voters that seeks to disqualify the repeal measure from the ballot. Rankin previously ruled the Division of Elections acted within its authority when it earlier this year allowed sponsors of the measure to fix errors with petition booklets after they were turned in and found the agency had complied with deadlines.

Her new ruling Friday focused on challenges to the sponsors’ signature-collecting methods that were the subject of a recent trial. Rankin set a Wednesday deadline for the division to remove the signatures and booklets she found should be disqualified and for the division to determine if the measure still has sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The state requires initiative sponsors meet certain signature-gathering thresholds, including getting signatures from voters in at least three-fourths of state House districts. Backers of the repeal initiative needed to gather 26,705 signatures total.

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The plaintiffs alleged petition booklets, used for gathering signatures, were improperly left unattended at businesses and shared among multiple circulators. An expert testifying for the plaintiffs said suspicious activity was “endemic” to the repeal campaign, according to a filing by plaintiffs’ attorneys, including Scott Kendall.

Kendall was an architect of the successful 2020 ballot initiative that replaced party primaries with open primaries and instituted ranked voting in general elections. Under open primaries, the top four vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election. The new system was used for the first time in 2022 and will be used this year.

Rankin wrote there was no evidence of a “pervasive pattern of intentional, knowing, and orchestrated misconduct to warrant” the petition totally be thrown out. But she said she found instances in which the signature-gathering process was not properly carried out, and she disqualified those booklets.

Kevin Clarkson, a former state attorney general who is representing the repeal initiative sponsors, said by email Friday that the ruling “looks mostly favorable” to his clients.

“We won on a lot of issues and on a lot of the books they were challenging,” he wrote. But he added he would need to run the numbers accounting for those Rankin rejected, a process that he said is complicated and would take time.

Kendall said Rankin disqualified 27 petition booklets containing nearly 3,000 signatures. “Clearly there were serious issues in this signature drive,” he said in a text message.

The Division of Elections still must assess whether the measure has enough signatures in 30 out of the 40 House districts, “and then all parties will need to consider their appeal options,” he said.

Patty Sullivan, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Law, said the Division of Elections “appreciates the court’s quick decision and will recalculate the final signature count according to the court’s ruling as soon as it can.”