DOJ Sues to Block Alaska Senate Certification if Sullivan Loses

The Justice Department has sued Alaska in federal court in Anchorage, asking a judge to block the state from certifying its United States Senate result if the outcome may have been affected by voter confusion between two candidates with nearly the same name.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, October 22, targets the presence on the November 3 ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, alongside the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan. The department argues that Daniel J. Sullivan is running with the intention of misleading supporters of the senator, and that Alaska would fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election if it certifies a result tainted by his inclusion on the ballot, Reuters and USA Today reported.

The suit asks the court to hold certification pending an investigation into whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant for Senator Sullivan. Its legal basis is the National Voter Registration Act, citing the law's stated purpose to protect the integrity of the electoral process.

A race that could decide the Senate

Senator Sullivan faces Democrat Mary Peltola, a former member of the House of Representatives, in a close race. Democrats need to gain four seats in November to win the Senate, and Alaska is one of the Republican held states they hope to flip, CNN reported. A fourth candidate, Gerald Heikes, is also on the ballot. In the primary, the incumbent won 68,726 votes and Daniel J. Sullivan won 4,107, CNN reported.

Alaska uses ranked choice voting. The top four candidates from the primary advance, and voters rank them in order of preference. Election officials tried to limit confusion on the ballot itself: candidates are listed with their middle initials, Dan S. Sullivan is identified as the incumbent, and Daniel J. Sullivan, a registered Republican, appears without a party affiliation.

The state Division of Elections first removed Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot. In June, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that he should be put back on it.

Experts are skeptical

Derek Muller, an election law professor at Notre Dame Law School, called the department's legal theory strange and unusual, and wrote that the argument is one of the worst he has ever seen. He said the statute does not give the Justice Department a free hand to stop a state from certifying, and noted that Alaska officials went out of their way to reduce confusion on the ballot.

The filing came on the same day that Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking in Norfolk, Virginia, declined to rule out department action to block a state certification, citing a hypothetical doomsday scenario. Neither Alaska's Division of Elections nor the Peltola campaign immediately responded to requests for comment, USA Today reported.

Voters decide the race on Tuesday, November 3.