Mary Peltola leads Senator Dan S. Sullivan by 4,250 first-choice votes, 118,926 (49.0%) to 114,676 (47.2%), in the Alaska Division of Elections count released late on Tuesday 10 November, the Anchorage Daily News reported1. She led 48.2% to 47.9% a week earlier, and more than 245,000 ballots are now counted. Her campaign says she won 56.6% of early in-person votes and 56.7% of mail ballots counted so far, a claim Lowdown has not checked.
Two other candidates hold 9,345 first choices: Gerald Heikes, a Republican from Palmer, with 5,318, and Dan J. Sullivan, the retired Petersburg teacher who shares the senator's name, with 4,027. On Lowdown's arithmetic Senator Sullivan needs about 72.7% of those transfers to close the gap: (9,345 + 4,250) ÷ 2 = 6,798 votes. If no candidate passes half of first choices, the tabulation on Wednesday 18 November drops the last-placed candidates and moves their ballots to each voter's next choice; ballots ranking no one else drop out, which raises the share he needs. Heikes's voters can be expected to lean to the senator, but all 5,318 of them make up only 56.9% of the pool on Lowdown's arithmetic, so he also needs net gains from the namesake's 4,027.
Peltola's campaign sued the Division, its director Carol Beecher and Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom, who oversees Alaska's elections, in Anchorage Superior Court on Friday 6 November under the Alaska Public Records Act2. The suit, Alaskans for Mary v. Dahlstrom, before Judge Thomas Matthews, seeks the register of returned absentee ballots with each accept and reject code. The state replied that the law does not require information that "does not even exist in the requested form", and that disclosure would breach voters' constitutional privacy, the same privacy ground argued in Alaska's suit over its voter list. Sullivan's campaign moved on 9 November to join the case as a party, arguing that Peltola wants to influence which ballots count outside the statutory review. A hearing was set for 10am on 10 November; no ruling had been reported by Wednesday. Alaska gives voters no way to fix minor defects on absentee ballots, and about 1,303 were rejected in the 2024 general election3.
Governor Mike Dunleavy said on 10 November that "we are in the midst of investigations as to determine if there was any wrongdoing" over the namesake's candidacy, Fox News reported4. He gave no detail, and no charge has been brought; the Alaska Supreme Court had restored Dan J. Sullivan to the primary ballot in June. Separately, the Department of Justice has appealed Judge Sharon Gleason's 1 November dismissal of its certification suit to the 9th Circuit, the federal appeals court for Alaska and California, but briefing is not expected until 11 January 20275. Alaska plans to certify on 25 November, six weeks before the appeal is even briefed.
