Justice Department Sues to Stop Alaska Certifying Its Senate Result if Dan Sullivan Loses Narrowly

The Justice Department sued on Thursday 22 October to bar Alaska from certifying its US Senate result if Senator Dan Sullivan loses by fewer votes than a second candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan receives. The complaint, United States v. State of Alaska, No. 3:26-cv-00376, is 14 pages long and pleads a single count under the National Voter Registration Act.

The election is on 3 November. President Trump told reporters that he directed the filing: “I’m the one that said do it,” PBS NewsHour reported. The complaint is signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. and Assistant US Attorney E. Bryan Wilson, and the court’s docket assigns the case to Judge Sharon L. Gleason in Anchorage. Absentee ballots were mailed on 9 October and in-person early voting began on 19 October, according to a motion filed the next day by Mary Peltola’s campaign committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The ballots are printed, and many have been cast.

What does the Justice Department ask the court to do?

It asks for an order that applies to one outcome only. Paragraph 42 defines a result “impacted by voter confusion” as one in which “(1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska’s rank-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election.” The prayer for relief asks the court to stop the defendants from certifying any such result “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.”

A Sullivan win would be certified on the ordinary schedule. Only a narrow Sullivan loss would be held. The defendants are the State of Alaska, the Division of Elections director Carol Beecher, the election boards and the State Ballot Counting Review Board. Under the Alaska statutes quoted in the complaint, the review board’s count must begin “not later than 16 days after an election,” and the director then certifies “the person receiving the largest number of votes.” Sixteen days after 3 November is 19 November.

Where does the claim come from?

From the opening section of the statute, not from its operative ones. Count One cites 52 U.S.C. § 20501(b)(3) and § 20510(a). Section 20501 is headed “Findings and purposes”. It lists four purposes: registering more eligible citizens, enhancing their participation, “to protect the integrity of the electoral process,” and ensuring “accurate and current voter registration rolls.” Section 20510(a) lets the Attorney General seek relief “as is necessary to carry out” the chapter. The complaint pairs that phrase with Bullock v. Carter (1972), in which the Supreme Court said a state has “an interest, if not a duty, to protect the integrity of its political processes from frivolous or fraudulent candidacies.”

The complaint concedes the gap. “To be sure,” paragraph 39 says, “Bullock involved including or excluding candidates from the ballot.” It argues that the same state interests “remain after ballots have been cast through certification.” It cites no case applying the registration act to ballot listings or to certification. Derek Muller, an election law professor at Notre Dame, told Alaska Public Media: “The statute simply doesn’t let the Department of Justice enjoin certification.”

Who has already ruled on the second Sullivan?

Alaska’s courts did, in June, and the state lost. On 15 June Ms Beecher wrote to Daniel J. Sullivan finding that his declaration of candidacy was filed “with a purpose to confuse or mislead.” The complaint lists her reasons: he asked to appear as “Dan Sullivan,” switched his affiliation to Republican shortly before filing, and ran a campaign website that resembled the senator’s. A superior court reversed her on 26 June, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed on 29 June, with its full opinion still to come. The Division then decided how to list him. Its official primary results show “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.” with no party beside “Sullivan, Dan S.” for the Republicans, and the general-election ballot marks the senator as “Incumbent”, according to the Democrats’ motion.

The federal suit rests on the finding that Alaska’s courts set aside. Ms Beecher’s letter is Exhibit A, and paragraph 40 says she “has already made the determination” that the candidacy is frivolous. That makes her both a defendant and the author of the plaintiff’s best evidence. Two groups moved to intervene on Friday 23 October partly because of that overlap. The motion by Alaskans for Mary and the DSCC says there is “reason to doubt that the existing defendants will vigorously defend” the case, “given their effort to exclude Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot earlier this year.” A second motion, by two Alaska voters, the League of Women Voters of Alaska and Common Cause, notes that the United States did not seek to intervene in the state case and that no appeal was taken to the US Supreme Court.

What would the requested investigation require?

Knowing what voters meant rather than what they marked. The DSCC motion says the Justice Department does not “explain how such an investigation could possibly be undertaken given the secret ballot.” It also points out that under ranked-choice voting a voter unsure which Sullivan is which can rank both. One of the voter intervenors, Jan Jakub Grzeda, “strongly objects to any efforts to intrude upon the secrecy of the ballot,” according to the second motion’s memorandum. The DSCC says that, if admitted, it will move to dismiss.

The primary shows what the test would measure. It was held on Tuesday 18 August, according to the Division of Elections; the complaint gives the date as 28 August, which is wrong. The official summary gives Ms Peltola 82,244 votes (49.54 per cent), Senator Sullivan 68,726 (41.40 per cent) and Daniel J. Sullivan 4,107 (2.47 per cent). Giving every Daniel J. Sullivan vote to the senator, as paragraph 42 does, takes him to 72,833, or 43.87 per cent, still 9,411 votes behind. Those are this publication’s calculations from the official totals. A primary is not a general election, and the test applies only to the November count. On those numbers, the votes the suit would reassign come to less than a third of the gap between the two leaders.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said before the filing that “it’s never our intention to, improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process,” according to Alaska Public Media. The senator’s campaign spokesman, Nate Adams, said: “We’ll let the DOJ complaint run its course.” The public copy of the docket shows no order from the court through 23 October: two motions to intervene, a request by Thomas A. Lamb to file a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the relief, and no appearance by any defendant. The case turns on whether a sentence saying what Congress hoped a statute would achieve can be enforced as though it were the statute.