Here We Go Again:
Trump DOJ Moves to Block Certification of Alaska Senate Election if Republican Loses

With the midterm elections approaching, the Trump regime is already laying the legal groundwork to potentially block certification of a Democratic victory in one of the nation’s most closely contested Senate races.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday, October 22, the Trump Justice Department is asking a federal judge to intervene in Alaska’s Senate election and prevent state officials from certifying certain results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola.

Yes, before the election has even taken place, Trump’s Justice Department is seeking a court order that could stop Alaska from officially declaring a winner.

And given Trump’s well-documented history of trying to overturn election results, the implications are impossible to ignore.

The lawsuit centers on an unusual dispute involving a second candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan, whose name is nearly identical to that of the incumbent Republican senator.

Federal attorneys allege that the second Sullivan entered the race to confuse Republican voters and siphon votes away from the incumbent, potentially handing Peltola a victory.

“The sole purpose of his candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan,” the Justice Department alleges.

But what the administration is asking the court to do goes much further than addressing voter confusion.

The Justice Department wants Alaska prohibited from certifying an election result if Peltola wins and a hypothetical reallocation of the other Sullivan’s votes would have produced a victory for the Republican incumbent.

Under the administration’s proposed standard, certification could be blocked if two conditions are met: Sen. Sullivan loses, and he would have won if every vote cast for Daniel J. Sullivan had instead gone to him.

The lawsuit calls for certification to be halted “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.”

In other words, the federal government wants the power to delay certification of an election based on what voters might have intended to do, rather than simply accepting the votes as cast and counted under Alaska’s election rules.

In June, Alaska’s Division of Elections disqualified Daniel J. Sullivan after concluding that his candidacy was intended to mislead voters.

State election officials pointed to his request to appear on the ballot as “Dan Sullivan,” his last-minute change of political affiliation to Republican, and a campaign website that resembled the incumbent’s.

In one particularly strange detail, the candidate initially requested to be listed as “Dan S. Sullivan,” using the incumbent senator’s middle initial instead of his own.

But Daniel J. Sullivan challenged his disqualification in court and won. The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision permitting him to appear on the ballot.

Rather than simply accepting that judicial outcome, the Trump administration has now turned to federal court, invoking the National Voter Registration Act to seek an order that could prevent the state’s election results from being finalized.

The lawsuit is not simply asking that the second Sullivan be removed from the ballot. It seeks to intervene in what happens after voters cast their ballots.

And the requested restriction is specifically triggered by a potential defeat of the Republican incumbent.

Peltola received 49.5 percent of the vote in Alaska’s August primary, while Sen. Sullivan received 41.4 percent. The second Sullivan received 2.5 percent.

The government argues that those votes could prove decisive in November.

Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Votes for eliminated candidates can transfer to the next-ranked candidate still in contention.