Alaska’s Republican-led government urged a federal judge Saturday to dismiss the Trump administration’s bid to block the certification of the state’s U.S. Senate race if Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R) loses by a margin less than the number of votes for his challenger with the same name.
With the midterm elections set for Tuesday, the state attorney general’s office wrote in a filing that the demands in the Justice Department’s lawsuit were “inappropriate and not even possible given Alaskan voters’ vital right to ballot secrecy.”
The DOJ filed the lawsuit on Oct. 22. On Friday, it added a request for a federal judge to order the segregation of ballots “that may be impacted by voter confusion.”
The request came after The New York Times reported Wednesday that Democratic nominee Mary Peltola’s campaign was involved in recruiting retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan onto the ballot in a bid to dilute support for the incumbent. Peltola’s campaign denied the allegations.
In its filing Saturday, Alaska said state officials had “carefully designed the ballot to minimize voter confusion.”
The idea of physically separating ballots listing Dan J. Sullivan “makes no sense,” it wrote, adding that the proposal is “both disturbing and impossible.”
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