The Alaska Supreme Court ruled on Friday that a candidate running in last year’s special U.S. House election was improperly removed from the ballot by the state’s elections department.
In a 30-page opinion, Alaska’s highest court ruled that the Alaska Division of Elections failed to adhere to state law when it removed Independent candidate Al Gross from the ballot during last year’s special election for the state’s at-large congressional district. Gross, who finished third among 48 candidates in the race’s June primary, dropped out ahead of the special and general elections.
During the 2020 election, Alaska voters narrowly adopted Ballot Measure 2, which replaced the state’s traditional election system with a top-four, ranked-choice voting (RCV) one. Under RCV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.
In Alaska, all candidates run in a nonpartisan, open primary, wherein the top-four vote-getters advance to the general. RCV is used in both the primary and general elections.
While candidates are permitted to withdraw ahead of general elections, the candidate’s “replacement on or removal from the ballot is subject to statutory and regulatory restrictions,” according to the Alaska Supreme Court. Under state law, a candidate seeking to withdraw from an election must do so at least 64 days before the general in order to
