ANCHORAGE (The Thursday Times) — A federal judge has thrown out a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to stop Alaska certifying its Senate result if Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses on Tuesday, in a race with a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot.
Judge Sharon Gleason ruled on Sunday that what the government asked for was “infeasible”, because many voters had already cast their ballots and those ballots had been mixed together. She wrote that the United States offered “no workable plan” for setting aside votes for the other Sullivan and investigating them while keeping the ballot secret. More than 86,700 Alaskans had voted early, the state’s Division of Elections said.
The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal shortly afterwards, which takes the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. “Alaskan voters deserve a fair election, not to be misled in an attempt to rig outcomes,” a spokesperson said. The department described the dismissal as procedural.
The contest is one of a handful expected to decide which party controls the Senate.
Who the two Dan Sullivans are
Dan S. Sullivan, a Trump ally first elected in 2014, is seeking a third term against Mary Peltola, the Democrat and former congresswoman who was the first Alaska Native elected to the US House. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is a retired elementary school teacher and former Forest Service employee from Petersburg, in southeastern Alaska.
Election officials first removed the retired teacher from the ballot, but the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in June that he could run. The ballot lists the senator as a registered Republican and the incumbent, and the other man as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. with no party shown, even though he has registered as a Republican. He has denied trying to confuse voters.
In the August primary Peltola took 49.54 percent and the senator 41.40 percent. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. took about 2.5 percent, enough to reach the top four and qualify for Tuesday’s vote.
That small share is why the case matters. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting: if nobody wins a majority of first-place votes, the last-placed candidate drops out and those votes pass to each voter’s next choice. The lawsuit, filed on October 22, wanted certification blocked if the senator lost by fewer votes than his namesake received.
A criminal probe and a governor’s warning
The ruling does not end the fight. Reports last week said aides to Peltola had been involved in recruiting the second Sullivan, and the Justice Department then accused her campaign and Senate Democrats of misleading the court. Michael Heyman, the US attorney in Alaska, said on October 30 that a criminal investigation was under way.
Peltola has denied any involvement. “I am not interested in tricking voters,” she said at a recent campaign event, and her campaign called the case a “sham investigation” and a “baseless lawsuit”. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. has called the lawsuit a “gross misuse of the Justice Department” and said he had no contact with her campaign about running. He has not answered messages in recent days.
Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, has ordered his own investigation and suggested the result may not be certified. “If we find out there’s wrongdoing, and if that means that the certification then is stopped or changed, then that’s what happens,” he said on October 30.
President Donald Trump, who says he ordered the suit, posted on Sunday that the “Fake” Sullivan had “DISAPPEARED”. Senator Sullivan said the same day that he would accept the result, win or lose, while accusing Peltola of lying about what she knew.
Not every Republican backed the case. The state’s own lawyers asked the judge to dismiss it as “meritless”, and Senator Lisa Murkowski said the department “should never have filed this lawsuit”.
