The Alaska Supreme Court on Saturday upheld the Division of Elections’ handling of a 2024 ballot initiative that sought to repeal the state’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system—months after voters narrowly rejected the measure at the polls. The full opinion can be read here.
The legal challenge, brought by Alaska residents La quen náay Elizabeth Medicine Crow, Amber Lee, and Kevin McGee, alleged that the Division of Elections improperly certified initiative 22AKHE for the ballot by allowing its sponsors to correct errors in signature booklets after the statutory filing deadline.
The repeal initiative, sponsored by Art Mathias, Phil Izon, and Jamie Donley, aimed to overturn Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, which was adopted by voters in 2020 and first used in 2022.
Represented by attorneys Scott Kendall (who was the primary author of ranked-choice voting in Alaska,) Jahna Lindemuth (attorney general under Gov. Bill Walker,) Samuel G. Gottstein, and C. Maeve Kendall of Cashion Gilmore & Lindemuth in Anchorage, the law-fare challengers, hoping to stop the petition from success, argued that the Division violated Alaska statutes and regulations by accepting post-deadline corrections to circulator certifications. They cited issues such as an expired notary commission having been used on a petition and claimed the Division’s actions undermined the integrity of the initiative process.
In an earlier ruling, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin had granted summary judgment in favor of the Division of Elections and the petition sponsors, holding that Alaska Statute 15.45.130 allows corrections to circulator certifications during the Division’s 60-day review period, as long as those corrections are made before signatures are counted.
The court also found that the Division’s actions did not violate regulatory requirements. It concluded that the certification issues identified by the challengers did not qualify as “patent defects,” meaning they were not clearly detectable during the initial review. Furthermore, the court ruled that the “single instrument” requirement for petition booklets did not bar corrections to individual pages. A mistake on one line in the petition should not invalidate the entire booklet.
Following a bench trial, some signatures and booklets were disqualified due to procedural errors, but the court found that enough valid signatures remained to keep the initiative on the ballot.
Initiative 22AKHE went before voters in November, 2024 and was narrowly defeated — by 743 votes. The repeal group was outspent and tied up fighting the lawsuit in court, or would likely have won. The group supporting the repeal of ranked-choice voting (Yes on 2 campaign) was outspent by the opposition (No on 2 campaign) by a margin of approximately 100 to 1. The Yes on 2 campaign raised around $489,000, while the No on 2 campaign raised nearly $14 million, nearly all from Outside dark money groups and wealthy out-of-state Democrats.
The challengers then appealed the Superior Court’s summary judgment decision to the Alaska Supreme Court. In its June 27 ruling, the high court unanimously affirmed the lower court’s interpretation of the relevant statutes and regulations. The justices agreed that the Division had acted lawfully in accepting certification corrections within the 60-day review window and confirmed that the initiative was properly placed on the ballot.
“The Court agreed with our statutory interpretation arguments about correcting petition booklet certificates after the petition is filed but before the review is complete. The Division of Elections administers elections with the highest level of professional integrity and fairness. I’m happy to see that reflected in this important court ruling,” said Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor.
The decision concludes a prolonged legal battle over the petition process and reaffirms the Division of Elections’ discretion in administering Alaska’s direct democracy procedures. Although the repeal effort was unsuccessful at the ballot box, the court’s ruling ensures that the process by which it reached voters will stand as a precedent for future citizen-led initiatives.
Another repeal effort is already under way, collecting signatures to submit to the Division of Elections and take the matter to the people for a vote once again on whether to return to normal voting in Alaska.
