The US Justice Department has gone to court to stop Alaska from certifying its Senate election result if the Republican candidate loses by a small margin.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Anchorage on Thursday, is about a name. Two men called Dan Sullivan are on the ballot.
Senator Dan S. Sullivan, a Republican who has held the seat since 2015, is in a tight race with Democrat Mary Peltola. Also running is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher whose name looks almost the same on the ballot paper.
A second Sullivan on the ballot
The Justice Department argues that Daniel J. Sullivan is not running a real campaign. Its lawsuit says he entered the race “with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him”, and that the purpose of his candidacy is to help the Peltola campaign.
It asks a judge to block certification of any result that voter confusion may have affected. Officials would then investigate whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were really meant for the senator.
A department spokesperson said the government is taking “necessary steps to ensure that this frivolous candidacy does not undermine the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters”.
Alaska’s own officials reached a similar view months ago. In June, the director of the state division of elections found that Daniel J. Sullivan had not declared a good faith candidacy, and had filed with the purpose of confusing or misleading voters.
He is running without a party label, after changing his registration between the primary and the general election. The lawsuit also notes that his campaign website uses a format, colours and overall theme similar to the senator’s own site.
Trump takes credit
President Donald Trump made clear on Friday that the lawsuit came from him. “I’m the one that said do it,” he told reporters in Florida.
Earlier in the week, Trump said on social media that his administration was looking at “powerful legal options” to remove the second Sullivan from the ballot. He said he was “very concerned” the ballot could be “totally confusing”. The president has complained repeatedly about the other Sullivan’s presence in the race in recent weeks.
The case lands less than two weeks before election day on 3 November. It is the latest move in an aggressive approach to election oversight by the administration, which has pressed states for voter registration data and argued for stricter rules in the name of public confidence.
Critics, including some Republican election officials, see federal overreach. Elections in the US are run by the states, and the Constitution gives the federal government only a limited role in how they are administered.
Why it matters
Control of the Senate could come down to Alaska. Democrats need to gain four seats in November to take the chamber, and Alaska is one of the Republican held states they are hoping to flip. There has been little reliable polling in the race, but both sides describe it as close, and the state is one of around ten battlegrounds that could decide who runs the Senate next year.
The legal theory behind the lawsuit is untested. Derek Muller, an election law professor at Notre Dame Law School, called it “strange and unusual”, and said it is unclear how a court could intervene in the way the department proposes.
Even so, the lawsuit makes a court fight after election day much more likely. If the result in Alaska is close, the question of who the state’s voters really chose may be settled by judges rather than by the count.
