JUNEAU, Alaska — A state court judge on Friday disqualified numerous booklets used to gather signatures for an initiative that aims to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting system and gave elections officials a deadline to determine if the measure still had sufficient signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
The decision by Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin in Anchorage comes in a lawsuit brought by three voters that seeks to disqualify the repeal measure from the ballot. Rankin previously ruled the Division of Elections acted within its authority when it earlier this year allowed sponsors of the measure to fix errors with petition booklets after they were turned in and found the agency had complied with deadlines.
Her new ruling Friday focused on challenges to the sponsors’ signature-collecting methods that were the subject of a recent trial. Rankin set a Wednesday deadline for the division to remove the signatures and booklets she found should be disqualified and for the division to determine if the measure still has sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot.
The state requires initiative sponsors meet certain signature-gathering thresholds, including getting signatures from voters in at least three-fourths of state House districts. Backers of the repeal initiative needed to gather 26,705 signatures total.
Advertisement
The plaintiffs alleged petition booklets, used for gathering signatures, were improperly left unattended at businesses and shared among multiple circulators. An expert testifying for the plaintiffs said suspicious activity was “endemic” to the repeal campaign, according to a filing by plaintiffs’ attorneys, including Scott Kendall.
Kendall was an architect of the successful 2020 ballot initiative that replaced party primaries with open primaries and instituted ranked voting in general elections. Under open primaries, the top four vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election. The new system was used for the first time in 2022 and will be used this year.
Rankin wrote there was no evidence of a “pervasive pattern of intentional, knowing, and orchestrated misconduct to warrant” the petition totally be thrown out. But she said she found instances in which the signature-gathering process was not properly carried out, and she disqualified those booklets.
Kevin Clarkson, a former state attorney general who is representing the repeal initiative sponsors, said by email Friday that the ruling “looks mostly favorable” to his clients.
“We won on a lot of issues and on a lot of the books they were challenging,” he wrote. But he added he would need to run the numbers accounting for those Rankin rejected, a process that he said is complicated and would take time.
Advertisement
Kendall said Rankin disqualified 27 petition booklets containing nearly 3,000 signatures. “Clearly there were serious issues in this signature drive,” he said in a text message.
The Division of Elections still must assess whether the measure has enough signatures in 30 out of the 40 House districts, “and then all parties will need to consider their appeal options,” he said.
Patty Sullivan, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Law, said the Division of Elections “appreciates the court’s quick decision and will recalculate the final signature count according to the court’s ruling as soon as it can.”
Alaska could see a boom in oil production next year, a sharp reversal for a state that has seen decades of declining production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
EIA estimates in a forecast released this week that Alaska could see a 13 percent rise in production compared to 2025 — the largest annual increase for the state since the 1980s — thanks to two new projects on the North Slope.
ConocoPhillips’ Nuna project came online in December 2024 and is expected to produce 20,000 barrels a day at its peak. Pikka Phase 1, jointly owned by Santos and Repsol, is slated to start production in early 2026 and could reach peak production of 80,000 barrels a day later that year.
Advertisement
The state last year averaged about 421,000 barrels a day in production, according to EIA, and could be roughly flat this year. The agency estimates that oil production could grow to 477,000 barrels a day next year. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, cheered the forecast in a statement.
The trans-Alaska pipeline near Pump Station 1 in Prudhoe Bay. (Marc Lester / ADN file)
A federal pipeline agency has proposed a $243,800 fine against the operator of the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline, related to a small crude oil leak in a pipeline heating system north of Fairbanks.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration says the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. committed several “probable violations” related to the “overpressure event and leak” in the heating system on Nov. 13, 2024, the agency says in the Oct. 2 notice.
A second small leak was also discovered soon afterward as the heating system was under repair.
The agency’s proposed fine is its first for Alyeska Pipeline in at least a decade, agency records show.
Advertisement
The heating system, built in 2020, cost more than $10 million to build, records show.
Since the leak, Alyeska Pipeline has not operated the heating system, except for testing or maintenance, because other alternatives are available, said Michelle Egan, a spokesperson with Alyeska Pipeline.
Less than a cup of oil leaked, she said.
There was no environmental impact or risk to the main pipeline because the heating system was isolated from it, she said.
“We would need to work with PHMSA if we decide that there’s some reason we do need to use the system,” she said.
Advertisement
The 800-mile pipeline is critical infrastructure in Alaska, transporting the North Slope crude oil that underpins much of the state economy. The pipeline has transported 18 billion barrels of crude oil since starting in 1977.
The heating system, built at Mile 238 of the pipeline near Coldfoot, consists in part of lengthy, 8-inch pipe to divert some crude oil from the mainline. The oil is heated for reinjection back into the mainline.
The system was designed to help prevent winter icing.
The November leak occurred when a pressure relief valve froze and couldn’t operate, after it had been tested with water, the report says. The failure of the valve caused the system to exceed the maximum operating pressure.
The valve was insulated for outdoor service but lacked heat tape, the report says.
Advertisement
Before the leak, the valve provided “overpressure” protection in the heating system 13 times. But Alyeska Pipeline only identified these recurring “abnormal” events during the investigation into the November leak, “long after many of these events occurred,” the report says.
The recurring events and absence of records indicated that “response, investigation, and correction of the operation of the safety device had not occurred” as required by federal law, the report says.
No high-pressure alarm was configured for the heating system, though pressure information “was available via controller screens and locally,” the report says.
The crude-oil weep from the flange set was not found until Nov. 25, 2024. The pipeline company determined on Nov. 26 that the “overpressure event” occurred, the federal agency says.
The pipeline company has until Dec. 17 to respond to the proposed penalty, Egan said.
Advertisement
“We’re going through that as thoroughly as we can, and continuing to work with them to make sure that we’re in compliance,” she said.
The notice was signed by Dustin Hubbard, director of the western region for the Office of Pipeline Safety in Colorado.
The proposed fine comes on the heels of a separate proposed compliance order issued by the agency in April.
That order raises concerns about inspections for possible cracks in the main pipe.
Alyeska Pipeline is “still working with PHMSA on the issue of running a crack tool,” Egan said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
Advertisement
“Our system integrity engineers assess the conditions of the pipe routinely and believe our current methods provide sufficient analysis to detect and manage issues,” she said.
Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. is owned by affiliates of Alaska’s major oil producers.
Harvest Alaska, an affiliate of Hilcorp, is the largest owner at 49%, while ConocoPhillips Transportation Alaska and ExxonMobil Pipeline Co. own the rest.
For thousands of Alaska’s federal workers, the government shutdown that ended last week was the latest episode in a tumultuous year, as President Donald Trump has sought to drastically reduce the size of the federal civilian workforce.
Since the beginning of the year, Alaska’s federal workers have been offered buyouts, been subject to mass firings and watched as programs they administer were cut or altered.
Alaska — with one of the highest concentrations of civil servants in the country — stands to see an outsized impacts from these changes. As of last year, Alaska had more than 15,000 federal employees.
Are you a current or former federal employee in Alaska who has been impacted by these changes? We’d like to hear your story.
