Trump's Justice Department sues Alaska to block Senate result if Dan S. Sullivan loses

A lawsuit filed before the vote

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit in federal court on Thursday, 22 October, asking a judge to hold back certification of Alaska's Senate result if Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola in the 3 November midterms. The department argued that a second candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., is deliberately trying to confuse voters, and it asks that certification be halted if the incumbent loses by less than the number of votes won by his namesake. Trump said on Friday, 23 October, that he had directed the department to bring the case.

I'm the one who said do it.

The filing does not explain how such an inquiry could take place without breaching ballot secrecy. Todd Blanche, the attorney general and a former Trump lawyer, played down the move and said his department did not intend to interfere with the election results, though he did not rule out circumstances in which that could become necessary. Democrats described that caveat as alarming.

Two candidates with one name

The race is one of the most closely watched contests in the midterms, and the incumbent, Dan S. Sullivan, is seeking a third six-year term after first being elected to the Senate in 2014 and re-elected in 2020. His opponent, Mary Peltola, is 53 years old and has a chance of becoming the first Indigenous senator in the United States. In the August primary, Peltola received 49.5 percent of the vote against about 41 percent for the senator.

Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is a retired elementary schoolteacher and former US Forest Service employee from Petersburg in southeastern Alaska. He is registered as a Republican, but the ballot lists him without a party designation, while Dan S. Sullivan appears as a registered Republican and incumbent. Alaska's Supreme Court allowed Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. to stay on the ballot in June, after election officials had disqualified him. He has denied that he is running to confuse voters.

Objections and legal doubts

Republicans have tried for months to remove Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot, accusing him of being a Democratic plant meant to siphon away votes. Legal experts say the lawsuit has little chance of success. It cites a clause in the preamble to the National Voter Registration Act that calls on states to protect the integrity of elections, and experts say that wording is probably too vague to let a judge overturn the will of the voters.

Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican election law expert who advised George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, called the move a sign of desperation.

Boy, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It feels like a real desperation play to me, because it has got zero basis in the law.

A wider fight over elections

The Justice Department has already filed lawsuits in nearly every state seeking access to voter files. Trump has also revisited his longstanding bid to restrict mail voting, a dispute that reached the Supreme Court, and has threatened to withhold federal election funding from states that refuse to change voter registration forms. The New York Times has documented repeated false claims by Trump about ranked-choice voting, voting machines and vote counting, and cited the Alaska move alongside a lawsuit against California over its voter rolls. Trump has also not accepted the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Democrats won. The Alaska count may decide which party holds the Senate majority.