Democrat Mary Peltola loses court bid for rejected ballot list as Alaska count continues

Democrat Mary Peltola loses court bid for rejected ballot list as Alaska count continues

The contest is the only Senate race in the country that remains too early to call

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today.

An Alaska judge has ruled against Mary Peltola's campaign in its bid for a list of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected, as counting continues in the state's unresolved US Senate race.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews ruled that Alaska's Division of Elections is "currently busy processing ballots ‌from ⁠the 2026 general election" and "simply lacks the capacity to generate the report from" the voter registration database at the behest of Peltola's campaign.

"Even if the request were otherwise considered reasonable ​outside the ​peak election time ⁠of year, it is simply not reasonable nor required right now," the ruling said. With 86% of votes counted as of late Wednesday, Peltola – the Democratic candidate – holds a narrow lead over Republican incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan, according to media tallies.

The margin between the two candidates stood at 1.6%. It is the only Senate race in the country that remained too early to call. Ballots are still being tallied in the ranked-vote election, with Peltola and two-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan the main contenders. If no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote, the race will head to a ranked-choice tabulation.

In brief

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? An Alaska judge has ruled against Mary Peltola's campaign in its bid for a list of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected, as counting continues in the state's unresolved US Senate race. Ballots are still being tallied in the ranked-vote election, with Peltola and two-term Republican Sen.

This is the opening of the story, shared with credit to The Independent — World. The rest of the report — with every detail — continues on the publisher’s website.

Continue reading at The Independent — World ↗

Cookie settings

Choose which cookies we may use. You can change this at any time from Cookie settings in the footer. Details of each cookie are in the Cookie Policy.

Strictly necessary

Needed for sign-in, security, payments and remembering these choices. Always on.

Preferences

Remember settings such as dark mode.

Analytics & performance

Help us count visits, understand which pages, devices and countries our readers use, and measure how well the site performs – anonymous and aggregated.

Advertising & marketing

Lets advertising partners show and personalise adverts, measure impressions, clicks and visits, prevent ad fraud and pay us – this is how the free site is funded.

🔔 News notifications

Get headlines from NewsHub on this device — even when the site is closed.

You can switch this off at any time. Works on Android, Windows, Mac and Linux browsers; on iPhone/iPad add the site to your Home Screen first.