The Justice Department has moved to preemptively block certification of the results of Alaska’s Senate race if Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses his tight race against Democrat Mary Peltola next month.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday, department officials described the candidacy of a third contender in the race — another Republican named Dan J. Sullivan Jr. — as a bid to mislead supporters of Sen. Sullivan into voting for the wrong candidate.
They asked a federal judge to bar the state from certifying the race’s results, should the senator lose by a margin less than the number of votes his same-named challenger receives. In that scenario, the department said, the court should investigate whether that result was tainted by voter confusion.
The move marked a highly unusual bid by the Justice Department to potentially intervene in the outcome of a race that could determine control of the Senate before the election has occurred. The Trump administration has pushed in public and in court to exert greater control over state-run election administration and worked to cast doubt on the integrity of the results.
“The sole purpose of [Dan J. Sullivan’s] candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan,” Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the Justice Department’s third highest-ranking official, wrote in the Thursday filing.
“Given the substantial likelihood that the inclusion of Dan J. Sullivan will confuse or mislead voters looking to cast a vote for Senator Sullivan and thus distort the will of Alaskan voters, there is a substantial likelihood that a certification of the election will reflect an electoral process that lacked integrity,” Woodward added.
Dan J. Sullivan did not immediately return requests for comment Friday. Spokespeople for Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and Peltola also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The candidacy of Dan J. Sullivan — a retired teacher and a former member of the Alaska Independence Party who registered as a Republican shortly before filing to enter the race this year — has been a source of consternation for Republicans.
Alaska election officials moved in June to boot him from the ballot, agreeing that his entry into the race was meant to confuse voters. But Dan J. Sullivan has repeatedly denied claims that he was trying to confuse, or coordinating with Democrats or Peltola’s campaign. A state court ordered him back on the ballot later that month, a decision later affirmed by the state’s Supreme Court.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday called Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy a “SCAM” and hinted that his administration could soon seek legal intervention in the race.
“We are looking at powerful legal options to remove the fraudulent Dan J. Sullivan Jr. from the Ballot, and holding the Democrats accountable for their Election Interference, in the pursuit of Justice and Fairness,” Trump wrote on social media.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Attorney General Todd Blanche downplayed the notion that the Justice Department might move to block certification of state results, describing such a situation as a hypothetical “doomsday scenario.” But he refused to rule out the possibility of such an intervention.
“It is not DOJ’s intention to — and it’s never our intention to — improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process,” Blanche said. “But, you know, to say there’s no circumstances that we would ever do that, of course, I’m not going to say that.”
Still, election experts described the legal arguments advanced by the department in its suit over the Alaska Senate race as “absurdly thin” and predicted it would not withstand judicial scrutiny. University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller called the department’s suit “one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.”
“In short, like many Department letters over the last few years, it is designed to win the press release rather than the litigation,” Muller wrote in a blog post.
Trump has spent years questioning election procedures and has fretted in recent months that a Democratic takeover of Congress could lead to his third impeachment. He continues to insist he won the 2020 election, even though recounts and court reviews found he lost, and he regularly complains without evidence that elections are rigged against Republicans.
He and his administration have spent the past two years trying to intervene with how states run elections, but have had little success. Trump tried to limit who received mail ballots but was stopped by the Supreme Court. The Justice Department sued 30 states for their voter rolls but has lost case after case in court. The Department of Homeland Security has prioritized finding noncitizens on voter rolls, but a judge this week restricted how it can conduct its investigations.
Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, told NPR this week he did not believe the Trump administration and its backers would challenge results if Democrats win control of Congress in a blowout.
But Hasen, who spoke before the Justice Department filed its latest lawsuit, named Alaska as a potential legal battleground if Democrats narrowly take control of the Senate. The state uses ranked-choice voting and takes longer than others to tabulate results, heightening the chances of litigation there, he noted.
“If it comes down to one seat, then I think all bets are off. And then I’m very concerned that the Trump administration will try to do things to manipulate the outcome of the elections,” Hasen said.
Matthew Choi contributed to this report.
The post DOJ seeks to block Alaska Senate result if Republican incumbent narrowly loses appeared first on Washington Post.
