A federal judge on Sunday rejected the Justice Department’s bid to hold up the certification of the results in Alaska’s Senate election in the event of a Republican loss, cutting short an extraordinary legal intervention in the race by the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason said she had no authority to grant the department’s preemptive request to delay resolution of the election if incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R) narrowly loses.
Another candidate with a nearly identical name, Dan J. Sullivan Jr., is also running, which the department argued could confuse voters and propel Democrat Mary Peltola to an unfair victory. The government said an investigation would be needed to determine voters’ intent.
But in her written opinion Sunday, Gleason noted that the department had offered no suggestion on how such an investigation could be carried out while respecting the secrecy of voters’ ballot choices. Prolonging finalization of results, she wrote, would itself prompt confusion and undermine confidence in the outcome.
“The absence of any explanation from the United States as to how its requested relief could redress its alleged injury while simultaneously maintaining the secrecy of the ballot is telling,” wrote Gleason, a nominee of President Barack Obama. “Simply, the Court cannot grant the United States the relief it seeks.”
The Justice Department swiftly appealed the ruling to the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
“Alaskan voters deserve a fair election, not to be misled in an attempt to rig outcomes,” the department said on X.
The lawsuit, filed in late October while early voting was already underway, is one of several unorthodox legal moves the Justice Department has undertaken in the final days of a midterm campaign in which Republicans face tough headwinds.
In addition to trying to intervene in Alaska’s election, the Justice Department has sought to prevent the counting of ballots from nearly 21,000 people in California who the agency says it has evidence to believe are not U.S. citizens and not eligible to vote. A judge rejected that request last week, citing concerns that the data the department used was deeply flawed. His decision has been upheld on appeal.
Democrats and voting rights groups similarly condemned the litigation in Alaska as an attempt by the Trump administration to influence the outcome of the race.
The state’s Senate contest is unusually competitive and could determine whether Democrats take control of the chamber. Republicans consider the seat a priority, and President Donald Trump last month said he told the Justice Department to file the suit over how the election would be run. In recent days, he has called for Peltola to be criminally charged and forced out of the race.
“No sham investigation or baseless lawsuit from a weaponized Department of Justice is going to stop Alaskans from electing Mary on November 3rd,” Peltola’s campaign said in a statement after the judge’s ruling. “Alaskans will choose their next U.S. Senator — not Dan Sullivan or his DC allies.”
Representatives from the campaigns of Sen. Sullivan and Dan J. Sullivan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Supporters of the incumbent GOP senator have fumed for months about the second Sullivan appearing on the ballot as a Republican. Their complaints went into overdrive last week when the New York Times reported that Peltola’s campaign was involved in recruiting the second Sullivan to run in an attempt to siphon votes away from the incumbent. Peltola has denied involvement, and Dan J. Sullivan maintains his candidacy is legitimate.
Still, Justice Department attorneys have seized on that reporting to bolster their claims that voters could be duped into voting for the wrong candidate.
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting. Four candidates appear on the ballot in the race for the Senate, with Peltola as the only Democrat. If no one gets a majority in the initial count, the lowest-performing candidate will be removed and his or her supporters will have their second choices tallied. That process will continue until a winner is selected.
State election officials this summer initially tried to keep Dan J. Sullivan off the ballot. He sued, and the state Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
The Justice Department’s argument to potentially hold up the results was premised on a novel reading of the National Voter Registration Act that legal experts have called thin. That law spells out how states conduct voter registration, not how they decide which candidates can run.
The introduction to that law says it was passed to “protect the integrity of the electoral process,” and the Justice Department argues that wording gives it broad latitude to intervene in how states run elections. Such an interpretation would allow it to file an array of election disputes across the country, now as well as under future presidents.
States and localities run elections and typically are allowed broad discretion.
But Gleason, in dismissing the suit Sunday, did not reckon with that argument. Instead, she based her decision on the fact that the Justice Department’s calls for a post-election investigation into voter preferences were almost certainly unfeasible.
“The United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified ‘investigation’ of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy,” she wrote.
The judge’s decision is unlikely to put an end to the debate.
The Justice Department is also conducting a criminal investigation into the circumstances behind Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy. Federal prosecutors recently issued dozens of subpoenas and record-preservation notices for text messages and other communications, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
The state is also investigating, according to Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R).
Sen. Sullivan, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, said he expected he would lose “a lot of votes to that trickery.” He questioned Peltola’s assertions that she was not involved in the recruitment of the other Sullivan on the ballot.
“There is no way this went on for a year that they weren’t informing her,” the senator said. “She got caught lying, and she’s still lying to the Alaskan people, the media, to all of us.”
Still, when pressed on how he would react should he end up losing, Sullivan said, “I’m going to accept the election results.”
Matthew Choi contributed to this report.
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