As votes continue to be counted in Alaska’s Senate race, the results so far show an increasingly tight contest — the exact scenario Justice Department officials contemplated when they filed an extraordinary lawsuit last month seeking to delay certification of the results in the event of a narrow Republican loss.
As of late Wednesday morning and with nearly three-fourths of votes counted, Democrat Mary Peltola was leading Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan by fewer than 1,000 votes.
Daniel J. Sullivan — the former teacher and political unknown, whom Justice officials have accused of colluding with Democrats to enter the race, confuse voters and siphon votes away from the similarly named senator — had racked up more than 3,500 votes.
A federal judge on Sunday rejected the Justice Department’s proposal to delay certification of the race if Sen. Sullivan lost by a margin less than the share of votes Dan J. Sullivan netted. The judge balked at the department’s call for an investigation into whether the outcome was tainted by confusion, calling it unworkable, given the secrecy of voters’ ballot choices. The state uses ranked-choice voting and takes longer than others to tabulate results.
That case is now before the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which so far has shown no sign of taking up the matter quickly. It has set a briefing schedule for arguments on the Justice Department’s appeal that extends into January, and the Justice Department has not yet sought to move up that timeline.
Democrats have condemned the suit — and a parallel criminal probe into the circumstances behind Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy — as a norm-shattering bid by the department to influence the outcome and intervene in a state’s election administration.
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