He's in a New York prison. Yet a judge let him stay on a U.S. House ballot — in Alaska

KETCHIKAN, Alaska — A fringe candidate who’s never been to Alaska and is currently in federal prison in New York is set to appear on the general election ballot for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat, following a judge’s ruling.

The Alaska Democratic Party says it plans to appeal the decision to the state’s high court.

The candidate, Eric Hafner, is running as a Democrat in an effort to unseat Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola. In Alaska’s election system, four congressional candidates, regardless of party, appear on a general election ballot together, after advancing in a nonpartisan primary.

The race, which the Cook Political Report sees as a toss-up race, essentially between Peltola and Republican Nick Begich, could help determine who controls the U.S. House next year.

From 0.4% of the primary vote to the general election ballot

Hafner finished a distant sixth place in the state’s August primary, with just 0.4% of the vote (467 votes). But two Republican candidates who received more votes dropped out of the race, landing Hafner on the general election ballot.

The Alaska Democratic Party then sued the state’s Division of Elections last week, seeking to remove Hafner.

In their lawsuit, Democrats’ argument was two-prong.

They said Alaska law dictates that if a candidate drops out of the top four, then the fifth-place finisher would take their place. They argued Hafner making it onto the ballot as a sixth-place candidate was unprecedented.

Their second argument was that Hafner is ineligible to run for the seat because he doesn’t meet the U.S. Constitution’s candidate residency requirements. The Constitution states that a candidate for U.S. House in a certain state must be “an inhabitant of that State” on Election Day.

The Alaska Democratic Party argued that Hafner would be unable to fulfill that requirement because he has about 15 years left on a 20-year prison sentence for threatening a series of politicians, police, judges and attorneys in New Jersey while he was living outside the country.

“I’m innocent of all charges. I deny all allegations,” Hafner said in a call over the prison phone line back in June.

Hafner has been an out-of-state candidate for congressional seats twice before: in Hawaii in 2016 and in Oregon two years later. He said authorities arrested him at a U.S. airport on the Pacific island of Saipan.

“Ultimately, if I’m elected, I expect to be released immediately at that point,” Hafner said in the interview. “There’s a federal statute under compassionate release that says you could be released for extraordinary compelling reasons. And, by golly, if I’m going to D.C. to represent the people of Alaska, I think that’s a very extraordinary and compelling reason.”

Democrats rebutted that notion during oral arguments Monday.

“The core point I would ask the court to focus on is if ever there is a person who cannot possibly become an inhabitant of the state in which they seek election by Election Day, that person is Mr. Hafner,” said attorney David Fox, who was representing the Alaska Democratic Party.

Why a judge kept Hafner on the ballot

The party says having another Democratic candidate on the ballot — even one with a fraction of a percentage of the total vote — could potentially tip the scales toward Begich.

That’s even though Alaska has ranked choice voting, which means, for instance, a voter technically could rank Hafner first, then Peltola second, and if no candidate gets a majority of the initial vote and Hafner is eliminated after a first round of tallying, the vote would move to Peltola.

On Tuesday, Alaska Superior Court Judge Ian Wheeles nodded to ranked choice voting as he ruled in favor of the state Division of Elections and kept Hafner on the ballot, writing that “ranked-choice voting neutralizes any claim of harm because in theory every voter can rank all candidates if they choose.”

Wheeles also denied the Democratic Party’s request for an injunction by saying that Hafner is constitutionally qualified to run for office, regardless of whether he is actually able to take office if elected; and that reprinting ballots would disrupt the election.

The state’s federally mandated deadline to send out first ballots, which go to international voters, is Sept. 21.

During Monday’s oral arguments, an election official expressed concern that if the state removes Hafner, it could miss that deadline.

Wheeles’ decision in Alaska is not the only recent judicial ruling to weigh the issue of reprinting ballots at a late date.

In North Carolina, that state’s high court ordered ballots to be reprinted, delaying the start of mail voting, so that former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be removed from the ballot.