Democrat Eric Hafner finished sixth-place in Alaska’s race for U.S. House in the August primary election. Then, two Republican candidates who received more votes dropped out of the race, which landed Hafner on the ballot for the state’s general election. Now, the Alaska Democratic Party is suing the state’s Division of Elections to remove Hafner from the ballot.
Hafner is currently serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison but that’s not exactly why the Democratic Party wants him off the ballot. He has never been to or lived in the state of Alaska and the party is arguing he doesn’t meet the U.S. Constitution’s requirements for candidacy. The Constitution says a House candidate must be an inhabitant of the state when elected. Oral arguments begin on Monday, Sept. 9.
Alaska Beacon reporter James Brooks has been following the lawsuit closely. He spoke with KRBD’s Jack Darrell about what it would take to remove Hafner from the ballot, why it matters, and why they don’t have much time:
Jack Darrell: So, James, what is the Alaska Democratic Party’s argument here?
James Brooks: The Democratic Party has laid out in writing a few different arguments on why the state should throw out Eric Hafner and either run the election with three candidates or replace him with the seventh place finisher, Republican Gerald “Jer” Heikes.
The strongest of those arguments comes from the US Constitution, which lays out three requirements for any US House candidate: You have to be 25 years old, you have to be a citizen for at least seven years, and you have to be an inhabitant of the state that you’re running for when elected. The Democratic Party is arguing that there’s no way that [Eric] Hafner can be an inhabitant of Alaska at the time he’s elected because he is in federal prison in New York State.
JD: Hafner received a little over 450 votes, right?
JB: Hafner had less than a percentage point in the primary election, and presumably he’d have a correspondingly low amount of votes in the general election when that happens.
JD: So I guess the easiest way to say this is: why does this matter? Meaning, why is the party trying to remove him from the
ballot?
JB: Right. Even though it is a low amount of votes right now, the race between Mary Peltola and Nick Begich is almost a toss-up. That’s what Cook Political Report said this morning. They just adjusted their race forecast from leaning towards Peltola to a toss-up.
But if there’s another Democrat on the ballot, the Alaska Democratic Party has argued that it will take votes away from Peltola – potentially tipping the election towards Begich. Now, Alaska has ranked choice voting. Voters can pick multiple Democrats, multiple Republicans, or a mixture of either, if they want to. But in past elections, we’ve seen voters – not a ton of them, but a significant number – decide that they just want to pick one candidate. And both Republicans and Democrats this year have been worried that these “bullet voters,” these “pick one” voters, if their candidate isn’t elected on the first choice that has the potential to really affect things if it goes into ranked choice voting.
You can imagine a situation where, say, 2% of Democratic voters just pick Hafner and don’t rank Peltola. The second Hafner gets eliminated, those 2% of votes are effectively lost to Peltola. But if there’s only one Democrat on the ballot, then those votes theoretically would go to Peltola and she would benefit.
JD: What does the state think? Because Eric Hafner seems to be pretty convinced that, constitutionally, he has a right to run in this race.
JB: The argument that [Hafner] has put forward is that anything can happen between now and the time the election results are certified. He could receive a pardon. He could be receive compassionate release. He could somehow get out of prison in time to serve in office if elected.
And the State of Alaska has said they believe Hafner; that anything can happen at this point, and it’s premature to make an argument against his candidacy. In a court filing they issued Friday morning, they said that nothing prohibits Hafner from running, but there might be something that prohibits him from serving if elected.
Also, the deadlines we’re talking about [in this case] are really tight. The judge needs to rule fairly quickly because the state has said it needs to be able to test election equipment with draft ballots starting September 11. That’s because the first ballots need to be sent out to international voters starting September 21. That means they need to be at the post office packaged up on the 20th in order to make that deadline. That’s about 3,500 ballots. So, it’s not the State’s full mail out, but it’s a lot of work on a very short timeline.
And it’s important to remember the stakes here. While Hafner isn’t expected to get a lot of votes, this is expected to be a close election, and more than that, it’s an election that could go either way. There are not too many of those kinds of seats nationally. The US House of Representatives is expected to be closely divided between Republicans and Democrats. So you have a race nationally that could go either way and benefit either party. So this is a case that doesn’t just matter for Alaska, it potentially matters for the whole country.
