The US Justice Department has sued to preemptively block Alaska from certifying its Senate election result if the Republican incumbent loses, in an extraordinary legal intervention less than two weeks before Election Day.
The lawsuit, filed on October 22 in federal court in Anchorage, asks a judge to halt certification of a win by Democrat Mary Peltola if votes cast for another candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan could have changed the outcome, according to Reuters and court reporting.
The two Dan Sullivans
The dispute centres on incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg. The department alleges the challenger is running “with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him,” and wants an investigation into whether voters who picked the second Sullivan meant to vote for the senator.
President Donald Trump said on Friday that he directed the lawsuit. “I’m the one that said ‘do it,’” he told reporters, according to the Associated Press.
Alaska’s courts have already considered the ballot dispute. State election officials disqualified Daniel J. Sullivan in June, finding the candidacy was not filed in good faith, but an Alaska Superior Court reversed that decision on June 26 and the Alaska Supreme Court summarily affirmed it on June 29, keeping him on the ballot.
Why Alaska matters nationally
The ballot itself distinguishes the candidates: the incumbent is identified as the registered Republican incumbent, while Daniel J. Sullivan appears without that designation. In the August primary, the senator received more than 68,000 votes and Daniel J. Sullivan about 4,107.
Alaska runs a top-four primary followed by ranked-choice voting, with tabulation expected to begin November 18. Control of the Senate could turn on the state, which is why the case has drawn national attention — and sharp criticism from election law experts, with Notre Dame professor Derek Muller calling the legal argument one of the worst he had ever seen.
The suit seeks certification relief, not a finding that the election was compromised, and it does not overturn the state court’s ruling. What it does is place a federal question over Alaska’s count before a single general-election ballot has been tabulated.
