Alaska Democratic Party sues to remove the name of incarcerated man from U.S. House ballot

The Alaska Democratic Party filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Division of Elections to remove the name of an incarcerated man from the ballot for Alaska’s U.S. House seat.

Democratic candidate Eric Hafner is set to appear on the ballot despite being in the middle of a 20-year federal prison sentence for threatening state officials in his home state of New Jersey. In its filing to the Anchorage Superior Court, the Alaska Democratic Party argued that Hafner should not appear on the ballot because he would not be able to meet one of the few requirements for serving in Congress: be a resident of the state he was elected to represent.

Even before Hafner was incarcerated, he never resided in Alaska.

Under Alaska’s election laws, the top four finishers in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election. The top finisher in last month’s primary was Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, who had more than 50% of the vote. In second place was Republican challenger Nick Begich, who had 26% of the vote.

The third-place finisher, Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, withdrew from the race after receiving 20% of the vote. So did fourth-place finisher, Republican Matthew Salisbury.

[Ballot for Alaska’s U.S. House seat will include a convicted felon]

That elevated the fifth- and sixth-place finishers onto the ballot. In fifth place was John Wayne Howe, the chair of the Alaska Independence Party, which argues Alaska should never have been granted statehood. In sixth place was Hafner, who received 467 votes for 0.43% of the total. Hafner previously ran for Congress as a Democrat in Oregon and as a Republican in Hawaii, but never made it onto a general election ballot.

Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, a Republican appointed by Dahlstrom last year, said Tuesday that Hafner would be allowed to remain on the ballot since it was not known whether he would be able to meet the residency requirement laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

In a statement from Hafner provided by his mother, Carol Hafner — who herself ran for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat in 2018 despite not being a resident — he reasoned that he could meet the residency requirement if the newly elected president pardons him in November, assuming that would be Vice President Kamala Harris.

“My current sentence is under appeal. Release, bail, etc. are on the table. If President Harris wants my committed support in Congress, she can overturn any sentence. I am ready to be out and be a reliable Democrat vote, supporting the Harris-Walz administration in their vision to revitalize unity and hope in what is the true heart of all America,” Hafner said in the statement provided by his mother in an email.

Hafner himself has limited access to a phone from inside his prison, and no access to the internet, his mother said. She said his prison is regularly subject to unpredictable lockdowns, making his phone access further limited and sporadic.

Tom Amodio, an attorney representing the Alaska Democratic Party, argued in a court filing that Hafner “has no business being placed on the ballot.”

The court filing states that Alaska law “does not provide for the inclusion of the sixth-place primary finisher on the general election ballot under any circumstances.”

Under the law governing Alaska’s election system, which was adopted by voters through a ballot measure in 2020, the top four vote-getters are placed on the general election ballot. The statute dictates that if a candidate “withdraws, resigns, becomes disqualified from holding office for which the candidate is nominated … after the primary election and 64 or more days before the general election, the vacancy shall be filled by the director by replacing the withdrawn candidate with the candidate who received the fifth most votes in the primary election.”

The statute does not mention sixth-place finishers. The general election was 61 days away as of Wednesday.

“But if it did allow for such inclusion, Mr. Hafner would need to be replaced by the seventh-place finisher,” Amodio wrote.

According to the court filing, Hafner is disqualified because “he is not and cannot possibly become an inhabitant of Alaska — as the U.S. constitution requires — while he is serving a federal prison sentence in New York until 2036.” He is also disqualified because he “failed to list his full residence address on his declaration of candidacy, as Alaska law required.”

Hafner provided a campaign address in South Dakota, a state he was not inhabiting at the time of the filing.

The Alaska Democratic Party is asking the Anchorage Superior court to stop the Division of Elections from printing ballots that incude Hafner’s name and require the division to print ballots that do not include Hafner’s name.

If Hafner is replaced on the ballot by the seventh-place finisher, that would be Republican Gerald Heikes, a candidate who received 424 votes in the primary after a pro-Peltola group ran ads highlighting his uncompromising opposition to abortion in all cases.

Alaska Department of Law Spokesperson Patty Sullivan said Wednesday that the department is reviewing the complaint filed by the Alaska Democratic Party.

Sullivan said the ballots were finalized Wednesday morning and sent to the printer on the same day “so Mr. Hafner cannot be removed from the ballots that are already getting printed.”

The case was assigned to Anchorage Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman. It was not immediately clear when the case would be heard.