Peltola campaign loses in court on rejected absentee ballots as she maintains narrow lead

Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola lost in her legal effort to get access to records identifying rejected absentee ballots during the ongoing count, and then lost some of her narrow lead in the latest ballot drop Wednesday night.An Alaska judge on Wednesday ruled against the Peltola campaign’s request for the records in the midterm's final uncalled Senate race, ruling the demand was "simply not reasonable" while election officials continue counting votes.Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews sided with the Alaska Division of Elections, finding the agency is "currently busy processing ballots from the 2026 general election" and "simply lacks the capacity to generate the report" from the voter registration database."Even if the request were otherwise considered reasonable outside the peak election time of year, it is simply not reasonable nor required right now," Matthews wrote, adding that "the timing of the Campaign’s request could simply not be worse."MARY PELTOLA'S CAMPAIGN, DEMS BACKED COVERT SCHEME TO FIELD SPOILER CANDIDATES IN ALASKA SENATE RACE: REPORTDemocratic Senate-nominee Mary Peltola has been under fire and investigations for potentially having knowledge of a campaign or Democratic operative scheme to place spoiler candidates on the ranked-choice voting ballot.(Nathaniel Wilder/Bloomberg via Getty Images)Peltola’s campaign had sued last week seeking information about which absentee ballots were flagged for rejection and why.Campaign attorney Abha Kelly told the court the process was "going incredibly smoothly" and that the campaign was not seeking confidential data or trying to disrupt the count.

She argued the request would simply centralize transparency that observers already have in a decentralized way.DUNLEAVY CALLS ALASKA VOTING SYSTEM ‘VERY CONFUSING’ AS RAZOR-THIN SENATE RACE FROZEN IN TIMEState attorneys countered that the records are not public, citing voter privacy interests."Voters have a privacy interest in that because peopl...