ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An Alaska state judge ruled Friday that the results of the special U.S. House primary election could not be certified until visually impaired voters are given “a full and fair opportunity to vote independently, secretly and privately.” The state immediately said it was planning an appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court.
The ruling, from Anchorage Superior Court Judge Judge Una Gandbhir, came after arguments earlier in the day in a lawsuit filed earlier this week by the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights against the Alaska Division of Election and Lt. Gov. Keven Meyer, who oversees the division. The commission asserted that the primary, which is the state’s first all-mail election, does not provide visually impaired voters in the state adequate voting access.
The order comes just a day before the Saturday voting deadline. It could upend a plan to hold the special general election on Aug. 16 and force an all-mail general election, according to the Division of Elections.
The ramifications of the court decision on the ongoing election were not immediately clear.
“No court should consider lightly an injunction that potentially upends an ongoing election, but neither can the Court allow flawed state procedures to disenfranchise a group of Alaskans who already face tremendous barriers in exercising a fundamental right,” Gandbhir wrote in her decision to grant the preliminary injunction.
The decision does not specify what giving visually impaired voters “a full and fair” opportunity to vote would entail, but Gandbhir wrote she “urges the parties to work together expeditiously to find a timely, appropriate remedy.”
Department of Law spokesperson Patty Sullivan said in an email late Friday that the department is “currently preparing an emergency petition for review to the Alaska Supreme Court, asking them to reverse the injunction and allow the election to proceed.”
The certification of election results was originally scheduled to take place June 25, two weeks after the voting deadline on Saturday.
“There would not be anything preliminary about an injunction here. It would have the effect of stopping an election that happens tomorrow,” Kate Demarest, an attorney representing the Division of Elections, said during a court hearing Friday.
Demarest said the June 25 certification goal is “the true drop-dead date in order to accomplish the really important goal” of holding the general election in-person on Aug. 16 as currently scheduled. Delaying the certification, she said, could force the division to hold the special general election — which will be the state’s first ranked-choice voting election — entirely by mail, and at a later date than Aug. 16, which will also be the primary voting day for all November races.
“That is a result that I think we all agree is not in the division’s interest, not in the plaintiff’s interest certainly and it’s not in the public’s interest,” Demarest said. “And it would extend Alaska’s lack of representation in the House of Representatives even longer.”
The human rights commission argued that the all-mail ballots are not accessible to visually impaired voters without assistance from a seeing individual, and that solutions currently offered by the division are inadequate.
Those solutions include offering accessible voting machines in just a handful of the 170 in-person voting places across the state. Such devices are typically offered in all polling locations. Division director Gail Fenumiai has said that they are not available in all locations because the division had only weeks to prepare for the special election triggered by the sudden death of U.S. House Rep. Don Young in March.
The commission also argued that the option of downloading and filling out a ballot online — which visually impaired voters can do using accessible software — is insufficient because they must then print the ballot and place it in a secrecy sleeve and envelope, which requires the assistance of a seeing individual.
“Putting the burden of problem solving this issue on the visually impaired voters is inconsistent with the law,” said Mara Michaletz, the attorney representing the commission, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of a visually impaired Anchorage voter who wanted to remain anonymous.
Michaletz called the Division of Elections’ conduct in the current election “a disaster.”
According to a 2016 survey by the National Federation of the Blind, there are around 17,600 Alaskans with a visual disability.
Blind and visually impaired voters said in interviews Thursday that voting has been challenging for them in previous elections — not just the current, all-mail one.
Nate Kile, program director at the Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, said he has used the accessible voting machines in previous elections, and said those were “reasonable experiences.”
But even when the machines are available, the situation isn’t perfect. Kile said in one election, he simply gave up after poll workers failed to operate the accessible voting machine, and instead relied on a poll worker to fill out the ballot for him.
“I allowed one of the volunteers there to assist me with the voting. Some people would not tolerate that,” Kile said. “We want people to have the right for that anonymity, but they just did not know how to use (the machine) at the time.”
Several said they must rely on family members or acquaintances for assistance filling out the ballot, but for those whose political views differ from from those of their immediate social circle, that can be a nonstarter, particularly in recent contentious elections.
“When we’re looking for the autonomy and independence to have those controls to take part in this Democratic process, those little details can become more and more important,” Kile said.
Bonnie Lucas, president of the Alaska chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, said that when voting in the 2020 presidential election, she had to wait for over an hour because the polling place workers did not know how to use the accessible voting machines.
Lucas said she had reached out to state election workers on multiple occasions to help them figure out how to better serve visually impaired voters. But she said she has continually encountered difficulties.
Several states allow voting entirely by computer for visually impaired voters. Lucas and others said that would be the ideal solution.
“I know some people just really don’t worry about voting,” she said, because they find it too challenging. “Plenty of people have gone to use the (accessible) machine, and it’s just not available.”
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