Alaska Senate Race 2026: A Judge Says No to Peltola's Ballot-Records Rush — and Her Lead Stands at 4,250
The last Senate race in America got a court ruling before it got a winner on Wednesday. An Alaska judge rejected the Peltola campaign's demand for the immediate release of rejected-absentee records, saying the Division of Elections is too busy counting to build the report — while Mary Peltola's lead over Sen. Dan Sullivan held at 4,250 votes, with the next count Friday and a ranked-choice tabulation waiting on November 18.
JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska's uncalled Senate race spent Wednesday in a courtroom as much as in a count room. Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews ruled that a request by Democratic candidate Mary Peltola's campaign for the immediate release of records identifying rejected absentee ballots was not reasonable, Reuters reported. The campaign sued state election officials last week seeking the records from this month's midterm voting.
The ruling was about capacity, not secrecy. The judge wrote that Alaska's Division of Elections is 'currently busy processing ballots from the 2026 general election' and 'simply lacks the capacity to generate the report' from the voter registration database at the campaign's behest, adding: 'Even if the request were otherwise considered reasonable outside the peak election time of year, it is simply not reasonable nor required right now.'
The count the division is busy with still favors the challenger. Tuesday night's Division of Elections results, reported by the Juneau Independent, put Peltola at 48.79% to Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan's 47.05% — a lead of 4,250 votes in a count of 245,470 ballots, with the Associated Press estimating 84% of the vote tallied at that point; Reuters put late-Wednesday U.S. media tallies at a 1.6% Peltola lead with 86% counted. One milestone inside the numbers: Peltola's margin now exceeds the 4,027 votes cast for Dan J. Sullivan, the retired Petersburg resident Sullivan's supporters accuse the Peltola campaign of backing as a namesake spoiler — the subject of a separate federal lawsuit seeking to halt certification if Peltola wins by fewer votes than the namesake receives.
What happens next is dated. The Division of Elections is scheduled to release more results on Friday, the deadline for ballots mailed within the United States to arrive; overseas ballots must arrive by November 18, and certification is scheduled for November 25. If no candidate holds a majority by November 18, the ranked-choice process will decide the race — and an Alaska Beacon analysis of the ballots counted so far shows Sullivan gaining a net 906 votes in a redistribution, not enough to erase Peltola's first-choice lead. The stakes are national: with Alaska undecided, Democrats hold a 55-44 Senate edge in the midterm tally, Reuters reported, and an Alaska win would give them 56 seats.
