Review of ranked choice repeal petition is needed after Anchorage judge disqualifies signature booklets

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin on Friday ordered the Alaska Division of Elections to determine by next Wednesday whether an initiative to repeal the state’s ranked choice voting and open primary system should appear on November’s ballot, after she disqualified more than two dozen signature booklets.

The initiative sponsors submitted more than 655 signature booklets in January. Supporters of the state’s ranked choice voting system and nonpartisan primaries filed a lawsuit in April, alleging that the repeal initiative organizers had violated state laws by leaving signature booklets unattended, leaving them open to fraud.

Ranked choice repeal organizers were required to submit 26,000 petition signatures from 30 out of 40 Alaska House districts to have the initiative qualify for November’s general election ballot. According to the Division of Elections, more than 37,000 signatures were submitted, meeting threshold requirements in 34 out of 40 House districts.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs included Scott Kendall, one of the primary authors of the 2020 ballot measure that put in place Alaska’s current voting system. He argued during a recent six-day trial that 11,000 signatures should be thrown out, meaning the petition would not qualify for the ballot.

Kevin Clarkson, a former Alaska attorney general, represented the defendants in court. During the trial, Clarkson acknowledged some violations of signature-gathering laws, but he had said those were due to ignorance rather than malice. He had argued those violations affected at most around 1,400 signatures.

Clarkson said by text message Friday evening that the judge had rejected almost all of the plaintiff’s claims. He said booklets were disqualified because of a few signature gatherers “not understanding or following the circulating rules perfectly.”

Clarkson later said by text message, “My analysis says we lost 2 of the 34 house districts we had but the initiative still qualifies for the ballot.”

On Friday, Kendall said by text message that Rankin’s order had disqualified nearly 3,000 signatures in 27 signature booklets, which he said was “an unprecedented amount.”

“Clearly there were serious issues in this signature drive,” he said.

Rankin ordered the Division of Elections to determine by July 24 whether the repeal effort still met the signature-gathering thresholds set out in state law.

Patty Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Law, said by email that 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.”

After the review is completed, Kendall said “all parties will need to consider their appeal options.”

In her 95-page opinion, Rankin said there was no evidence of “orchestrated misconduct” by repeal initiative organizers that warranted invalidating the petition entirely.

She said plaintiffs needed to show a preponderance of evidence that warranted the “extreme remedy” of disqualifying Alaska voters’ signatures. Some booklets were disqualified for being left unattended, other booklets were disqualified for being shared by signature gatherers. But a vast majority of submitted booklets were accepted.

During testimony, Phillip Izon, the author of the ballot initiative and organizer of the signature drive, was scrutinized for claiming to have collected 580 signatures in one day — far more than one expert said was feasible. Rankin, though, rejected arguments of wrongdoing in connection with a large number of signatures gathered in a single day.

Rankin had already dismissed part of the plaintiffs’ lawsuit in June, finding that the Division of Elections acted properly when it allowed the sponsors of the repeal petition to correct problems with signature booklets after they were submitted.