27-01-2025
Alaskans don't have a right to correct errors on absentee ballots, state judge rules
Jan. 27—An Anchorage judge has ruled that Alaskans don't have a constitutional right to correct errors they make on absentee ballots.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, the Native American Rights Fund and the firm Perkins Coie sued the state in 2022, arguing that the lack of a process to fix defective by-mail ballots violated the Alaska Constitution.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the League of Women Voters, the Arctic Village Council and two individual Alaska voters who said their rights were violated because they did not have an opportunity to correct mistakes on their ballots, which meant their votes weren't counted.
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Yvonne Lamoureux ruled against the plaintiffs on Friday. She said in her 32-page ruling that the state's requirements for absentee voters "impose only a limited burden on the right to vote."
The lawsuit followed the state's first by-mail election in 2022. Almost 7,500 absentee ballots were rejected, with a greater proportion of those rejected ballots coming from parts of the state where Alaska Natives make up a majority of the population.
Two-thirds of those rejected ballots were for mistakes made on envelopes containing the ballots.
Alaskans need to have identification information on their ballot envelope; a witness needs to watch the voter sign the envelope, and the witness then needs to sign it themselves.
In 2022, the leading cause of rejected ballots was for the lack of a witness signature on ballot envelopes. The Alaska Division of Elections recently reported a similar trend in the 2024 general election.
Two-thirds of states have processes in place that allow voters to correct errors with their absentee ballots to ensure their votes get counted, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Those processes are known as "ballot curing."
Leaders of the bipartisan Alaska House and Senate majorities expect election reform to be a major topic of discussion this legislative session. Both legislative chambers have measures before them to implement ballot curing in state law, and to eliminate the witness signature requirement.
Meghan Barker, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Alaska, said the organization was unsure on Monday whether it would appeal Friday's decision to the Alaska Supreme Court. Barker said the ACLU was planning on working with the Legislature this year to approve a ballot curing process in Alaska law.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
