Alaska Supreme Court to hear appeal to ranked choice voting repeal measure Aug. 22

The Alaska Supreme Court is set to hear an appeal next month, challenging an initiative that seeks to repeal ranked choice voting and open primaries.

Oral arguments were scheduled Friday on an expedited basis for Aug. 22 — two days after the primary election. The plaintiffs are requesting that the court issue a decision on whether the initiative is valid by Sept. 3, which is the Alaska Division of Elections’ target date to print ballots for the Nov. 5 general election.

The division in March certified that a group of Alaskans had successfully gathered enough signatures to put an initiative on the general election ballot to repeal Alaska’s new voting system — which was itself narrowly approved by voters through a 2020 ballot measure.

Three Alaska voters filed a lawsuit in April, challenging how the signatures were gathered, and how the Alaska Division of Elections allowed errors in petition booklets to be fixed. The plaintiffs asserted the repeal supporters had likely not collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin threw out part of the lawsuit in June that challenged the petition booklet correction process. In July, Rankin disqualified dozens of booklets, after some had been left unattended, and ordered the division to determine if the repeal measure still qualified for the ballot.

After a short review, the Division of Elections said the initiative “remains qualified” for the general election ballot. Rankin’s final judgment in favor of the defendants was issued July 24.

Scott Kendall, an attorney and one of the authors behind the 2020 ballot measure that implemented ranked choice voting, is representing the three plaintiffs. According to court documents, the plaintiffs assert that supporters of repealing Alaska’s new voting system “had not submitted a sufficient number of qualified signatures to the Division before two key statutory deadlines.”

The plaintiffs are appealing on two grounds. They say the Division of Elections used an unlawful process to allow the initiative supporters to fix errors in dozens of petition booklets, and that the the corrected booklets were impermissibly submitted after a statutory deadline.

Kendall said the appeal is intended to ask a novel question for the Alaska Supreme Court: “Do filing deadlines strictly apply to ballot measures as they do to candidate filings?”

If the court sides with the plaintiffs, Kendall said the ranked choice repeal measure would likely not have enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Former Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, who is appearing on behalf of the ranked choice repeal backers, said he felt confident Rankin’s decision was correct. He said the plaintiffs are not appealing “the part of the case they lost at trial.”

“On the issue they are appealing, the statutes expressly permit the correction of petition booklet certifications before the signatures are counted,” Clarkson said.

Alaska’s voting system, first used in 2022, includes open nonpartisan primary elections. The top four vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election. The general election is determined by ranked-choice voting, which will again be used this November.

Oral arguments are scheduled to start at 10 a.m. on Aug. 22. They will be livestreamed online on KTOO.