DOJ Sues to Pause Alaska Senate Certification Over Name Confusion
Attorney General Todd Blanche says the move is necessary because two candidates shared the same name, though state Republicans are challenging the federal intervention.
By Stella Brooks ·
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to halt the certification of the U.S. Senate race in Alaska. The federal government is asking a court to pause the process until it resolves a dispute over two candidates with the same name on the ballot.
President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to take this action late last week. The suit argues that voters may have been confused by the presence of two Dan Sullivans. One is the Republican incumbent, and the other is a Democrat recruited by Mary Peltola’s campaign to split the vote. Trump also called for a criminal prosecution of Peltola, a former congresswoman, citing a New York Times report on the recruiting effort.
Academics describe this as the first time since the Civil Rights era that the federal government has sued to stop the certification of an election. The Constitution traditionally assigns this duty to the states. Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN on Sunday that the department did not want to intervene but had no choice in this instance. “We are not doing anything improper,” Blanche said.
The move has divided the Republican party in Alaska. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, said the administration “should never have filed” the suit. The Alaska state government, which is Republican-controlled, filed its own court papers attempting to have the federal case dismissed. The state’s other senator, Dan Sullivan, has not publicly stated whether he supports the lawsuit.
Legal experts question the strength of the federal case. Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, called the argument “one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.” He noted that political parties often use extra candidates to pull votes from rivals. If state courts allow it, the federal government generally has no role in challenging the results.
This lawsuit is part of a series of legal actions by the administration in the days before Tuesday’s election. The Justice Department previously sued California to block the counting of ballots, alleging 20,000 noncitizens were on the rolls. A federal judge rejected those demands on Wednesday. The department also sued Washington over about 400 voters and seized ballots from Georgia’s Fulton County related to the 2020 election.
Trump announced a $1 million bounty this week for proof of voter fraud. He told reporters he would accept the results if they are “honest elections.” Early voting has proceeded without major disruption, with about 35 million ballots cast so far.
