On October 12, the Alaska Supreme Court determined the identity of the winner of the Democratic primary for state house, 40th district. The primary had been in August. Only now can the state print the November 2016 ballots for the 40th district. See this story. By 4-1, the court said Dean Westlake, not Benjamin Nageak, had won.
A sad day for election integrity in Alaska.
It is interesting that the standard for overturning an election in Alaska is malconduct. You can screw an election up, as long as you didn’t do it on purpose.
In one precinct, all voters were given both the Republican primary ballot and the Democratic-Libertarian-etc ballot. Under Alaska’s Topsy Turvy primary system, anyone, including Republicans, may request the combined ballot for the other parties. So Republican voters could have asked for the Democratic ballot, but in this case they were given the ballot.
The Democratic incumbent who lost the primary, caucuses with the Republicans in the legislature. The Election Commission is under the Lieutenant Governor who is a Democrat, who ran with a Republican who ran as an Independent, and changed his personal party affiliation so that the Lieutenant Governor candidate who was the Democratic gubernatorial candidate would join the joint ticket. Since the Democrats then had no candidate for governor, the Libertarians qualified for a membership on the Ethics Commission.
For those who still defend the status quo of partisan primaries, “confusing” and “moronic” are not virtues.
Any AK voters now at the sunny South Pole – waiting to get their absentee ballots ???