Democrat Mary Peltola's Senate campaign filed suit against Alaska election officials Friday, demanding records identifying voters whose absentee ballots have been rejected as the state keeps counting in one of the closest 2026 midterm races anywhere in the country — a race in which Peltola leads Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by just 637 votes.
According to the Anchorage Daily News, the campaign committee Alaskans for Mary filed a seven-page complaint in Anchorage Superior Court against the Alaska Division of Elections, its director Carol Beecher, and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who oversees the division. The case is before Judge Thomas Matthews.
The campaign says it asked the Division of Elections for a copy of the Absentee Register beginning Oct. 27 and was turned down. The lawsuit claims the state is violating the Alaska Public Records Act and argues the campaign is "ensuring transparency, timeliness, and accuracy as the counting process continues and every Alaskans' voice is heard."
The state isn't budging. A Department of Law statement provided to the Anchorage Daily News says Alaska law does not require the release of the information and that the agency will fight in court to keep it protected. The division calls the data "preliminary absentee ballot information" — material it has long treated as confidential because it can change and affected voters haven't yet been notified. Releasing it in the manner the lawsuit seeks, the state argues, would burden election workers and could delay the count, per the Anchorage Daily News.
The numbers explain the urgency. Peltola leads Sullivan by 637 votes with more than 215,000 ballots counted, per the Anchorage Daily News. Tens of thousands of ballots are still out, some still in transit. Ranked choice tabulation is scheduled for Nov 18, and certification for Nov 25. Under a tight margin like this, every rejected absentee ballot is a potential swing vote — and Peltola's legal team clearly knows it.
But the lawsuit is only the latest front in a race that has been tangled in litigation and controversy for weeks. An independent candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan appeared on the ballot alongside the incumbent — a situation President Trump has said confused voters. The Justice Department sued Alaska last month to block certification of the race if Sullivan lost by a margin smaller than the independent Sullivan's vote share. A federal judge dismissed that suit on Nov 1, two days before Election Day, according to Democracy Docket.
The president has demanded the "real" Dan Sullivan be declared the winner even as votes remain uncounted, a demand Democracy Docket called "dangerous." Reports have also accused Peltola's side of recruiting a namesake candidate to muddy the ballot, though voters quoted in press accounts said they were not confused.
The case is being handled by the Elias Law Group, the firm founded by Marc Elias, who also founded Democracy Docket — meaning the same operation pushing the ballot-access narrative is tracking the litigation through its own media arm.
Meanwhile, the broader midterm picture is grim for Republicans. Democracy Docket reports the GOP suffered an "overwhelming defeat" in the midterms, leaving Alaska and Mississippi as two Senate seats Republicans are scrambling to hold. In Mississippi, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is laying the groundwork for possible litigation of her own, demanding that provisional ballots be set aside so their eligibility can be verified, per a Nov 5 letter from her lawyers to election officials in all 82 counties.
And in California, the Trump administration this week dropped a federal lawsuit over roughly 20,000 mail-in ballots cast by people suspected of being non-citizens, with Attorney General Rob Bonta calling the withdrawal a victory for the state, according to Newsweek.
Back in Alaska, the state has not yet filed a response to the Peltola lawsuit. What is clear is that a Democrat candidate wants the names of Alaskans whose ballots were tossed — before the state has finished deciding whether they were tossed at all.
Our Take
Here's what the legacy press won't say out loud: this lawsuit isn't about transparency. It's about a Democrat campaign that trails an incumbent Republican and wants a list of rejected ballots so its lawyers can start hunting for votes — and for people to pressure — while the count is still live. Alaska has protected this preliminary data for years for a simple reason: it isn't final. More than 10 days remain for ballots to arrive, per the Washington Examiner's reporting. Releasing names now would let a campaign contact voters the state hasn't even notified yet.
Notice the pattern. The Elias Law Group is running this case, the same network behind the endless election-litigation machine that told us for years that questioning vote counts was an attack on democracy. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and suddenly the answer is sue first, ask questions later.
And remember how we got here: a Senate race this close in a state using ranked choice voting, with an independent named Daniel J. Sullivan on the ballot. The establishment laughed off the namesake problem. Voters weren't confused, they told us. The DOJ's suit was dismissed. Fine — but now Peltola's camp is in court demanding granular ballot data before certification, and we're supposed to call that routine?
Alaskans deserve a count that is final, verified, and transparent to observers — not a litigation strategy designed to cherry-pick rejected ballots until the math flips. The state is right to make the Elias firm fight for it in court.
