Justice Department Sues to Delay Alaska Senate Certification if Sullivan Loses

The Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop Alaska from certifying the results of its closely fought Senate race if the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan Sullivan, loses, arguing that the presence of a second candidate with nearly the same name could confuse voters.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Alaska less than two weeks before Election Day, asks that certification be paused after the November 3 election while the government investigates whether votes cast for the other candidate, a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg named Daniel J. Sullivan, were actually meant for the senator. It cites the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, pointing to language in the law’s preamble about protecting the integrity of the electoral process.

Polls suggest the senator is locked in a very tight race with Mary Peltola, a Democrat and former congresswoman. Control of the Senate could turn on the outcome. Peltola, a moderate who supports gun rights and oil development, would be the first Democrat to win the seat in nearly two decades.

The complaint argues that the sole purpose of Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy is to help Peltola by drawing votes from the incumbent, and that a certification could therefore reflect a process that lacked integrity. That is the department’s core argument, and President Trump has echoed it, calling the newcomer a hoax candidate meant to draw votes from the incumbent. A spokesman for the senator said he would let the complaint run its course.

The question has already been through Alaska’s courts. In June, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the second Sullivan could remain on the ballot. State officials have since tried to make the distinction clear: the senator will appear as Dan S. Sullivan, labeled as a registered Republican and the incumbent, while the other candidate’s name appears without a party label. In the primary, the senator won 68,726 votes to the other Sullivan’s 4,107.

Election law experts were sharply critical. David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, called the suit an unprecedented intervention by the federal government and, according to The New York Times as relayed by Straight Arrow News, said he could not think of another case in which the federal government had tried to block an election’s certification, especially so close to an election. Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote that the legal claim was so thin it had essentially no chance of success.

Experts also noted a practical problem. Because Americans vote by secret ballot, there is no evident way to determine after the fact what a voter intended when marking a particular name, and the department has not said how such an investigation would work.

Alaska’s other senator, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who supports her colleague’s reelection, said the state had already distinguished the two candidates and that the department should not have sued. Harry Child, a spokesman for Peltola’s campaign, called the suit a despicable political threat to overturn an election.

The case comes as President Trump has attacked Alaska’s ranked-choice system, which voters adopted in 2020 and which lets them rank candidates in order of preference. Trump has called it a scam and urged Alaskans to back a ballot measure to repeal it. Under the system, voters can rank both Sullivans, and a vote can move to a voter’s next choice as lower-placed candidates are eliminated.