An incarcerated candidate who finished sixth in Alaska’s U.S. House race was allowed to stay on the ballot, according to a ruling by the Alaska Supreme Court on Thursday.
While serving a 20-year jail term for harassing government officials in New Jersey, Eric Hafner is running for office in Alaska as a Democrat. The Alaska Democratic Party had attempted to have his name removed from the ballot.
There will be two convicted felons on Alaskan ballots in November, according to the one-page ruling by the state’s highest court. Trump will not be sentenced following the November election, despite his conviction earlier this year.
In a 4-1 split, the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed a decision from a lower court. On the other hand, Justice Susan Carney was not in agreement.
The candidacy of a convicted felon for office is unusual, but not unprecedented. To illustrate the point, just before the 2008 election, Ted Stevens, a senator from Alaska, was found guilty on seven felony counts of corruption.
A spokesman for the Alaska Democratic Party, Lindsay Kavanaugh, expressed concern on Thursday, calling the decision a “very dangerous precedent.”
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Kavanaugh expressed his deep concern over the state’s recent decision to allow individuals with criminal convictions or incarceration periods of any length of time to run for office.
It’s not just that Hafner is serving a long sentence in federal prison that has people talking about his bid for a prominent U.S. House seat. Additionally, Hafner has never called Alaska home.
Anyone can run for office in a state other than their own, according to federal law, so long as they intend to make that state their permanent home once elected. Since Hafner is serving a term in New York, three thousand miles away from Alaska, the Democratic Party in the state first argued that he shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the state’s election since he can’t prove domicile there.
However, during the arguments before the Alaska Supreme Court, a lawyer representing the Alaska Democratic Party attempted to argue that, regardless of his residence or felony convictions, Hafner did not garner enough votes to be included on the ballot in Alaska.
No matter their party affiliation, the top four finishers in Alaska’s top-four primary system—which was approved by ballot measure in 2020—move on to the general election.
With 467 votes out of roughly 109,000 cast, Hafner came in sixth place in the primary election held last month. After the primary votes were tabulated, the Republican candidates who finished third and fourth in the race withdrew their names from consideration, thus the Division of Elections added the names of the Republican candidates who finished fifth and sixth to the ballot.