The Radical Reading Room

An Anchorage Superior Court judge has ruled that Alaska election officials acted unlawfully when they certified Republican Jose Tagle for the general-election ballot after the Alaska Public Offices Commission had already entered a final disqualification decision.

In an order issued Oct. 22, the court said the Division of Elections and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom could not undo APOC’s ruling and restore Tagle to the ballot. The judge treated the commission’s disqualification as final and immediately effective, which meant the later certification was contrary to state law.

The ruling does not decide who will win the race, and it does not find Tagle guilty of any crime. It also does not order ballots to be reprinted or remove his name from ballots that have already been distributed. What it does do is limit what the state can certify after Election Day: if Tagle receives a majority of the vote, the court said his election may not be certified.

The dispute grew out of a challenge to Tagle’s candidacy after questions were raised about his financial disclosure paperwork. APOC disqualified him, state officials later reversed course, and that reversal became the focus of the court case. The judge’s order leaves the certification issue in place while preserving the underlying ballot-access dispute that prompted the litigation.

For now, the decision means Alaska election officials must follow the court’s reading of the APOC ruling when they deal with Tagle’s candidacy and any post-election certification question. The order is a civil election-law ruling, not a criminal case, and it leaves voters to decide the race under the ballot already in use.