The Justice Department Has No Business Holding Alaska’s Election Hostage

President Trump did not leave much to interpretation. Asked on Friday about the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to delay certification of Alaska’s Senate election if the Republican incumbent loses, he told reporters, according to CNN, that he was the one who said to do it.

That admission should settle any doubt about what this case is. The department has asked a federal court to pause certification after the November 3 election while it investigates whether votes for a second candidate named Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher, were really meant for Senator Dan Sullivan. It filed the suit less than two weeks before Election Day, in a race that could decide control of the Senate, at the direction of a president whose party needs the seat.

The legal theory is remarkably thin. The department leans on the preamble of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which mentions protecting the integrity of the electoral process. Derek Muller, an election law professor at Notre Dame, said the statute simply does not let the department block certification, and that he expected the suit would not last long, according to The Associated Press. David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research said he could not recall any administration trying to stop the certification of an election, The Guardian reported.

The practical problem is worse. Americans vote by secret ballot. There is no lawful way to ask voters, after the fact, which Sullivan they meant, and the department has not explained how its proposed investigation would work. A remedy that cannot be carried out is not a remedy. It is a cloud placed over the result in advance.

The administration’s strongest argument deserves a hearing: two candidates with nearly identical names on one ballot can genuinely confuse voters, and Republicans believe the second candidacy was designed to siphon votes from the senator. If that were true, it would be a real wrong. But Alaska has already dealt with it. The state’s Supreme Court ruled in June that the second Sullivan could stay on the ballot, and election officials responded by labeling the senator as the registered Republican incumbent while listing the other candidate without a party. In the primary, the senator won 68,726 votes to his namesake’s 4,107. Alaskans appear to know the difference.

Even Republicans in Alaska are unpersuaded. Senator Lisa Murkowski said the state had already distinguished the candidates and that the department should never have filed the suit. Senator Sullivan’s own spokesman would say only that the campaign would let the complaint run its course.

The deeper damage is to trust. Certification is the step that turns votes into an accepted outcome. When the federal government, at the president’s instruction, announces before Election Day that it may try to block that step if the result goes the wrong way, it tells voters that the count is provisional on whether the party in power likes it. That message corrodes confidence for everyone, including the winners.

The court should dismiss this case quickly, and Alaska should certify its results on schedule under its own law. Congress, too, should take note: elections belong to the states and their voters, not to a Justice Department taking direction from a candidate’s most powerful ally. Alaskans will choose their senator on November 3. That choice should stand.