Alaska: Due to Coronavirus issues, petitions now being mailed to gain signatures against Alaska Governor

The Coronavirus shut-down has put a dent in the signature gathering effort against Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R). Petitioners had claimed they had 30% of the needed total. The petitioners are now going to mail petitions to houses and have them send the petitions back.

I'mm not sure exactly how this will work. Alaska law seems to require circulator who personally attests to the signing. However, I'm not sure that the law requires the circulator to actually witness the signing (which I believe it does in other states). More difficult may be that the law states that the petition be circulated in person (Sec. 15.45.580). I wonder if these signatures will meet the requirement (perhaps another person in the house could be the circulator?) and if they will be possibly tossed out due to this.

This seems to be a gamble by the petitioners. Unlike in most other states, Alaska has no time limit on the petitions. So petitioners could actually pause the effort and then restart it whenever the situation returns to something resembling normal procedures.

Regardless, the recall is still waiting for the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether it can meet the malfeasance standard needed to get on the ballot.

If the court allows the recall, petitioners would need 71,252 signatures to get to the ballot. Note that of the 49,006 signatures that they've already received, a third were by Democrats. If Dunleavy were recalled, there would not be a replacement race. Instead, the Lieutenant Governor (a Republican) would automatically be moved up to Governor.