The Trump administration’s lawsuit over Alaska’s Senate race has been dismissed, giving the legal system another reminder that election disputes become remarkably tangled when secrecy, ranked-choice voting, and nearly identical names collide.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason, an Obama appointee, tossed out the Justice Department’s case seeking to halt certification if incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses. Gleason dismissed the lawsuit without allowing the Justice Department to amend the complaint and try again. The DOJ said it will appeal the ruling.
The lawsuit centered on Daniel J. Sullivan, a lesser-known candidate who was reportedly registered as Dan S. Sullivan, the name used by the incumbent senator, while running as a Republican primary challenger. The Justice Department alleged that Democratic operatives connected to Mary Peltola’s campaign worked to register the other candidate under the similar name, describing the move as an effort to create a “decoy” Dan Sullivan on the ballot.
The DOJ asked the court to block certification under two conditions: if Senator Sullivan did not win, and if votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan would have instead gone to Senator Sullivan, producing a different result under Alaska’s ranked-choice process.
The complaint argued that the similar names could confuse voters and distort the election outcome. The DOJ wrote: “Given the substantial likelihood that the inclusion of Daniel J. Sullivan will confuse or mislead voters looking to cast a vote for Senator Sullivan, and thus distort the will of Alaskan voters, there is a substantial likelihood that a certification of the election will reflect an electoral process that lacked integrity.”
Gleason rejected the requested remedy because the government did not explain how the court could investigate the ballots while preserving the secrecy of the ballot. In her ruling, she wrote: “The absence of any explanation from the United States as to how its requested relief could redress its alleged injury while simultaneously maintaining the secrecy of the ballot is telling.”
She followed that with an especially blunt conclusion: “Simply, the Court cannot grant the United States the relief it seeks.”
Politico reported that Gleason found the administration had offered “no workable plan” for dealing with the alleged voter confusion. The Justice Department had asked the court to order Alaska to set aside ballots for an investigation, but the judge said such an investigation could not realistically be conducted in an election that depends on secret ballots.
That leaves the DOJ with a difficult appeal ahead. Its case tried to address a potentially serious ballot confusion problem, but the proposed fix ran directly into the rules protecting voter secrecy. Election law was already complicated enough before two candidates with strikingly similar names entered the conversation.
For now, the lawsuit is out, the certification challenge has been rejected at the district court level, and the Justice Department says it intends to keep fighting. The appeal will determine whether this unusual Alaska election dispute gets another day in court.
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