‘It would be catastrophic’: A Supreme Court decision could upend Alaska’s crucial Senate race

In the villages that dot Kodiak Island off the coast of southwest Alaska, the post arrives by plane. Mailing a ballot to the archipelago’s hub takes at least two days — if the region’s frequent storms haven’t grounded air traffic.

It’s a common problem across Alaska. And it’s a big reason why the state allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted for up to 10 days afterward, a critical reprieve for voters in remote communities that are disconnected from the state’s highway system and sometimes even polling locations.

That’s why Alaskans across the political spectrum are sounding the alarm about a pending Supreme Court ruling. A majority of justices appear to be leaning toward barring states from counting late-arriving ballots, a ruling that would upend voting laws in Alaska and more than a dozen other states. That could potentially disenfranchise hundreds of voters in Kodiak’s distant villages and thousands more across the remote reaches of The Last Frontier — and upend Alaska’s election process in a state that could determine Senate control.

“This matters a lot in a place like Kodiak, because absentee voting, it’s not a convenience here,” said Jared Griffin, the mayor of Kodiak Island Borough, who is an independent. “It’s going to really hurt those rural, remote voters.”

A ban on late-arriving ballots could have an outsized impact on Alaska Natives, many of whom live in rural villages that already experience delays in receiving and returning ballots. It’s a scenario that’s sparking bipartisan fears of depressed turnout in the state’s hotly competitive Senate race between former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan. The contest could decide control of the chamber.

Democrats in particular are crying foul — accusing Republicans of pushing changes that could disenfranchise members of a significant Democratic-leaning voting bloc.

“It would be catastrophic. It’s mean-spirited,” Eric Croft, the chair of the Alaska Democratic Party, said of the potential effect on rural and Native voters. “It would hurt participation in rural Alaska. And Mary Peltola’s very strong in her Native communities, and in the community she comes from. So I think it will hurt her."

‘Blunt-force trauma’

President Donald Trump won Alaska by 13 points in 2024. But both sides see a competitive Senate race shaping up.

Peltola holds a narrow edge over Sullivan in the handful of public polls testing the race so far, leading the Republican by 5 percentage points in an Alaska Survey Research poll from mid-March. National Democrats see Peltola as a major recruiting win, and have already put over $3 million into boosting her campaign, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact.

Republicans are shoveling money into the state as well, a sign they don’t see Sullivan as a lock. Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Majority Leader John Thune, pledged this week to pump $15 million into the race — a staggering sum for the state of 740,000 people.

Core to Peltola’s hopes of flipping the state — and possibly the Senate — are running up the score in the Bush region, the term Alaskans use for the a vast expanse of isolated villages from the Aleutian Islands to the North Slope that are cut off from the state’s road system and include much of its indigenous communities.

Alaska Natives make up roughly 20 percent of the state’s electorate and are a powerful force in its politics. They helped propel Peltola, who is Yup’ik and has deep roots in the Bethel region, to her 2022 special-election upset to serve out the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s term in the House. In the November election that year, Peltola swept the vast majority of predominantly Native precincts, according to an analysis by Split Ticket. They've also backed GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski against right-wing challengers; Sullivan has ties with the communities as well.

Many Alaska Natives rely on voting by mail, and activists see it as a critical tool in rural stretches where voter turnout is often lower than in more urban areas. That includes the region Peltola represented in the state House.

Ballots come in late from all over the state where more than four-fifths of communities are cut off from the main road system. But they’re tardy from rural and Native communities at a rate two-to-three-times higher than those coming from mainly urban and non-Native areas, according to a brief that a group of Native organizations filed to the Supreme Court. In state House District 38, which Peltola represented, nearly four-fifths of all absentee ballots came in after Election Day.

None of those late-arriving ballots would be counted if the Supreme Court strikes down a five-business-day grace period in Mississippi, in the case brought by the Republican National Committee and backed by the Trump administration.

“They want a ballot in their hands the day of election [so] you know the winner that night. That’s difficult,” said Democratic state Rep. Maxine Dibert, an Alaska Native who represents a district in and around Fairbanks, in the rural center of the state. “There’s already barriers to voting.”

The ruling, which could come this summer, could upend election administration in Alaska just two months before the state’s primaries — a worst-case scenario that prompted the state’s Republican attorney general, Stephen Cox, to ask the court to issue “clear parameters for Alaska” in its eventual ruling. Though Cox did not take sides in the case, he stressed the “unique challenges” Alaskans face in voting in a state where volatile weather can knock out mail services and polling locations sometimes lack the staff to open.

Peltola’s campaign said in a statement that she would work to ensure “Alaskans are able to make their voices heard” in November.

“Mary believes everyone who is eligible to vote should have access to the ballot box and one-size-fits-all rules from DC rarely work for large rural states like Alaska,” campaign spokesperson Harry Child said. “Whether by road, plane, or boat, we’ll be reaching Alaskans where they’re at and making sure they can participate in our safe and secure elections.”

Alaskan leaders are also bracing for the far less likely passage of the SAVE America Act, a set of voting strictures being pushed by Trump and his allies that state officials and local activists warn could further disenfranchise rural and Native populations. The bill is stalled in the Senate in part over the objections of Alaska’s senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, though Sullivan supports it.

“We're going through a lot of blunt-force trauma with this multi-pronged effort to not meet the voters where we’re at,” said Michelle Sparck, who runs Get Out the Native Vote, a nonpartisan group dedicated to improving Native turnout.

Senate stakes

Murkowski, who has drawn strong Native support across her campaigns and is backing Sullivan in his reelection bid over her former ally Peltola, has slammed her party’s twin efforts to curtail mail voting and tighten identification requirements as a “level of voter intimidation.” And she has warned a Supreme Court ruling eliminating the grace period for mail ballots would hit her state harder than any other.

“I’ve got a state that is very reliant on mail-in voting,” she told POLITICO, “and we want to continue that.”

Sullivan has his own ties to Native communities. He’s won the backing of several federation leaders in their personal capacities. His wife, Julie Fate Sullivan, is Koyukon Athabascan and hails from an influential family.

A spokesperson for Sullivan said the senator believes mail ballots cast by or on Election Day — even if they are received afterward — should be counted.

“Senator Sullivan has a record dating back to his time as Alaska’s Attorney General of defending voting rights for Alaskans, particularly in rural and Alaska Native communities. He believes that every eligible vote cast before or on Election Day should be counted,” Sullivan spokesperson Amanda Coyne said in a statement. “He also applauds Alaska Attorney General Stephen Cox for filing an amicus brief in this case, highlighting Alaska’s unique challenges and geography.”

Art Hackney, a veteran GOP operative who is running an outside group backing Sullivan’s reelection bid, said voters would adjust to potentially having to mail their ballots earlier. And he suggested the effect on the Senate race would be negligible.

“It’s just a matter of figuring out how to deal with it,” Hackney said. “The percentage impact, I think you can toss a coin — a few this way, a few that way. They’re both going to be fighting for [Native and rural] votes.”

But Democrats, who see Alaska as a possible linchpin to their hopes of retaking the Senate, say the restrictions could hurt Peltola on her home turf — potentially imperiling their broader midterms strategy.

They argue that Alaska has already taken steps to tighten voting rules, pointing to the sweeping and bipartisan elections overhaul bill lawmakers sent to GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy last month that would update voter rolls, create a ballot-tracking system and establish a ballot-curing process.

“These efforts do one thing and one thing only: disenfranchise people who live in rural parts of Alaska,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, a longtime Democratic strategist in the state who is not involved in the Senate race. “You could make the argument that these sort of things hurt Peltola, because as the first Native woman to be elected to statewide office, she obviously has the support of Alaska Natives. That’s a core constituency.”