Alaska Dems Fight to Pull Own Candidate From Ballot

In an unusual move, Alaska Democrats have filed a lawsuit to remove one of their own party's candidates from the state ballot.

According to the Alaska Beacon, the Alaska Democratic Party sued the state's Division of Elections on Wednesday to take Eric Hafner, who is currently in prison, off the ballot for the Nov. 5 election.

Alaska's top Democrat leaders are reportedly up in arms over Hafner's bid for the state's lone House seat, not least because he has never lived in Alaska.

"This is about someone who is incarcerated, an unqualified candidate that shouldn't have been moved onto the ballot," Lindsay Kavanaugh, executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, told the Beacon.

A former New Jersey resident, Hafner is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in New York for threatening public officials in the Garden State.

Democrat leaders in Alaska have reportedly rallied around incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, as she seeks to defeat independent and Republican challengers, in addition to Hafner, on Election Day.

Although Hafner was the sixth-place finisher during the state's August primary, he made it into the "final four" for the general election after two Republicans who finished ahead of him dropped out of the race.

In an email to the Beacon, Alaska Department of Law spokesperson Patty Sullivan said the department "is reviewing the complaint and will respond on behalf of the Division of Elections, which followed Alaska law and the U.S. Constitution when it put Mr. Hafner on the general election ballot."

The Alaska Democratic Party argues in the lawsuit that Hafner is ineligible to appear on the ballot because he is unable to meet the Constitution's residency clause for House candidates.

According to the clause, a House candidate must be an "inhabitant" of the state that contains the relevant House district "when elected."

Hafner's release from prison isn't scheduled to occur until at least 2036, federal records show.

Attorney Scott Kendall, who is responsible for much of Alaska's current election law, isn't involved in the case but told the Beacon that he thinks the state's Democrats have a case about Hafner's ballot eligibility.

"I think they've got a fair argument," he said. "I think their best argument here is that there's an impossibility argument. This guy can't get out by Nov. 25 or whenever — he just can't, and he cannot be elected."

With draft ballot designs already sent to a printer and set to be mailed to overseas voters Sept. 21, the party reportedly requested that the case be given emergency priority and expedited.

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