“when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”

Eric Hafner is a prisoner in New York State   He has never been in Alaska  Yet he’s on the ballot in Alaska as a candidate for the US House of Representatives  As a Democrat.  The only one of the four candidates with a D after his name.  

Two years ago, when he ran, the Democrats filed a lawsuit to get him off the ballot on the grounds that he was in prison in New York and not an Alaskan inhabitant, nor would he be.  The Republicans fought them in court to keep his name on the ballot.  

The Alaska Supreme Court citing the qualifications listed in the United States Constitution, 

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen. [U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 3]

ruled that there was always the possibility he could get released by the election. 

It’s 2026 and he’s back on the ballot and he’s still in prison in New York as far as anyone knows. He’s not appeared in Alaska. He’s not an inhabitant of the state. 

As of Friday night he had 21,057 votes. More than the difference between the leading candidate, incumbent Nick Begich and second place candidate non-partisan Bill Hill. 

From Division of Elections update 11/13/26

The NYT, The National Republican Party, and the President of the United States have all complained about long time Alaska resident Daniel J. Sullivan being on the ballot for US Senate to confuse voters because his name is similar to Senator Dan Sullivan. The DOJ has filed suit against him. Even though there is no law against having the same name as another candidate, or against recruiting candidates.

As of Friday night Daniel J. had only 4,560 votes. Less than half the difference (10,412 votes).between front runner Democrat Mary Peltola and second place candidate Sen. Dan Sullivan.

The NYT did not investigate Hafner as a spoiler candidate or those folks spending spending several hundred thousand dollars promoting him in hopes of diverting voters away from Bill Hill.  Even though he's much closer to them than Daniel J.  

My gut reaction is that now is the time to acknowledge that Hafner is not present in Alaska for his (non) election and have him thrown off the ballot.  

But one's gut is often wrong.  

If that were to happen now how would the State handle his votes?  Would his votes evaporate and Begich's percent of the votes would increase?   My quick math says Begich would have 52% of the vote and win.  Would they distribute his second place votes?  

Alaska has ranked choice voting, so it makes more sense to see where Hafner's second place votes would go.  But I don't now how to 'read' the files the Division of Elections offers with all the data. (My computer says it can't open the JSON file. And if I could it would probably take forever to figure out how to get what I wanted.)  

However, Fair Vote seems to have figured it out and calculated how the next rounds will go:

By subtracting the 4th round votes for Begich and Hill from their 3rd round votes, you can figure out how many second place Hafner votes went (actually, will go)  to each candidate:

Begich gets 1,468 votes from Hafner

Hill gets 9,901 votes from Hafner

And about 11,000 voters either ranked people who were already eliminated, or no one at all.

My guess would be that the people who voted Begich as their second choice leaned right, but didn't really want to vote Begich first.  (Yes, I know there are probably lots of other interpretations.)

At this point, if FairVote got it right, there's nothing left to do except congratulate Begich.  

But it raises two big unresolved issues for me:

1.  Embracing Ranked Choice Voting.  Proposition 2 that would have ended ranked choice voting (and open primaries and some campaign finance disclosures) is going down to defeat in this year's election.  It's time that Democratic Party learn how to live with it and even embrace it.  What if the left leaning organizations (including the Democratic Party) that anointed the non-partisan Bill Hill as their candidate and steered their money to him, had been move even handed and also supported Democrat Matt Schultz?  How much did the lack of a legit candidate with a D following his name give the edge to Begich?  The Democrats need to lean into RCV more and to trust the voters.  In this election they should have trusted both left leaning candidates, Hill and Democrat Shultz.  Before Schultz dropped out due to lack of money and support, the two had said they would run cooperative campaigns and ask their supporters to choose the other as their second choice.  That's how ranked choice voting is supposed to work.

I don't know that Begich would have lost, but I think there would have been more enthusiasm and even more voters if that had happened. 

2.  More obstacles to out of state candidates   Alaska needs to find some ways to make it more difficult for out of state people to run in Alaska as a lark.  When the US Constitution (which lists the qualifications for House and Senate candidates) was written, there were relatively few states and they were close together (though travel from state to state took much longer than it does today.) 

Right now it costs $100 to file to run for US Senate or House in Alaska.  Some have suggested raising the filing fee and/or require a minimum number of signatures.  Or have the Division of Elections put on the ballot the state of residence after the name of someone who is not an Alaska resident when the ballots are printed.  

[One last note: I did most of this Saturday (yesterday) morning.  There was an update on the vote count Saturday afternoon.  Things continue in the same direction, so I'm not changing the images  If you want to see the latest unofficial numbers, click here.]