The petition to ditch Alaska’s ranked-choice voting was filed with the Division of Elections in January, and the Division has been busy verifying the signatures to make sure there are enough to put the question on the ballot.
The group that is trying to get the ranked-choice voting repealed, Alaskans for Honest Elections, filed over 42,000 signatures. It needed only 26,705 of those to be qualified as registered voters in Alaska, with a legitimate address, and other details.
But the group also needs 30 out of 40 House districts to be proportionally represented by signers of the petition. After over six weeks of waiting for the verification process, it still needs four more districts to qualify for the ballot.
From data acquired from the Division of Elections, it may be close. Democrat-dominated districts in Juneau and downtown Anchorage are still short qualified signatures, although the division is still counting. Districts 36 through 40 are coming up short.
For example, in District 40, the farthest north in Alaska, where Barrow and Kotzebue are located, there are 36 qualified signatures, but 190 would be required to add that district to the list. It appears unlikely that District 40 will have enough names to be one of the three remaining districts needed.
At the south end of the state — District 1 Ketchikan — the signature gatherers only needed 482 names, but 798 have qualified so far. Ketchikan is represented in this effort to repeal ranked-choice voting, and then some.
The total of qualified signatures so far — 33,650 — exceeds what is needed, so now it comes down to having 30 districts.
Of the signatures examined by the Division, 1,928 of were duplicates, 20 had no address provided, 57 had no date by their signature, 594 had no identification, 102 signed before they were registered, 495 were not registered voters, and there were a few other miscellaneous reasons why names were disqualified. So far, 3,580 signers have been disqualified.
Here’s where the signature verification process stands, with Alaskans for Honest Elections needing just three more House districts to qualify for the November ballot:
