The State of Alaska has asked a federal court to dismiss a Trump administration lawsuit that seeks to block certification of its Senate race if the Republican incumbent loses by a narrow margin.
The motion Monday came in response to the Justice Department’s complaint last week arguing that confusion over a candidate on the ballot with a name similar to that of the incumbent Republican, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, could taint the election result.
In its filing, the state detailed its moves to ensure that voters know the difference between Senator Sullivan and Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired teacher and political novice who Republicans have argued was planted on the ballot by Democrats to siphon votes from the incumbent.
The second Mr. Sullivan has said that he is not trying to trick voters but is simply running as a Republican dissatisfied with the incumbent.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit asks the court not to certify the election if the incumbent senator loses and he would have won if the votes for either Sullivan went to him. It also calls for an investigation into whether votes for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant for Senator Sullivan, though it does not detail what that would involve.
The state’s motion said that any open-ended investigation into the identify of voters “would gravely threaten the integrity of the electoral process.”
The Justice Department’s request for intervention in Alaska, which President Trump said came at his direction, is one of several steps that the administration has taken to assert authority over the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
On Friday, the Justice Department sent letters to election officials in California demanding that they help identify potential noncitizens on voter rolls and set aside their ballots. That case is pending. The letters are part of the department’s broader push to exclude large batches of mail-in votes on the suspicion that some had been cast by noncitizens, despite evidence that such voting is exceedingly rare.
The Alaska Senate race is expected to be a close contest involving the incumbent and Mary Peltola, a Democrat.
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, in which voters can list their second and third choices. Those choices are counted in the event that no candidate wins a majority. Some Republicans have said that they fear that voters will list only one Sullivan and accidentally choose the one who is not the incumbent.
The state’s motion said that its ballot distinguishes between the Sullivans by using their middle initials. It also shows that the senator is a Republican incumbent and does not provide a political affiliation for the novice. The newcomer is identified as Daniel, while the senator is Dan.
The state also is arguing that the ranked-choice system should do away with any confusion. If voters make the two Sullivans their top two choices and their first pick is eliminated, their vote would next go to the other Sullivan.
Attorney General Todd Blanche has said in a statement that the Justice Department is not seeking to stop any ballot from being cast or to stop the certification of the election. The lawsuit, he says, seeks to have ballots preserved “in a manner so that only Alaska’s governing officials have the information necessary to make a determination as to whether Alaskan voters were confused or misled.”
Devlin Barrett, Kellen Browning and Anna Griffin contributed reporting.
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