Election Results: Alaska Moves to Kill Trump-Ordered Suit
Alaska’s Republican-led state government moved on Monday to kill the Justice Department lawsuit that seeks to block certification of the state’s Senate election if Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, narrowly loses — a case President Donald Trump has said he ordered. State lawyers asked a federal judge to throw out the suit, arguing that Washington has no power to step into a state election, let alone on behalf of a favored candidate. The filing, made one week before the November 3 midterm elections, sets a Republican-led state against a Republican president’s Justice Department in a fight over a Senate race that could help decide control of Congress.
The lawyers represent Carol Beecher, Alaska’s elections director, who works for Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican. Their filing states the position bluntly: “The United States lacks authority to intervene in state elections at all, much less in support of a favored candidate.” The Justice Department has said it brought the case to fight voter confusion and to “protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska.” The case is now before U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason, an appointee of President Barack Obama, in Anchorage.
Election Results: What the Justice Department’s Lawsuit Asks For
The department sued Alaska election officials last week, filing on Thursday, and asked the court to prevent certification of the Senate results if Sullivan loses and the votes cast for another candidate with a nearly identical name, Dan J. Sullivan Jr., could have changed the outcome under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system. The department argues the senator is at risk of losing because voters could be confused by the two names on the ballot. The suit asks the judge to stop the state from certifying any result in which the senator loses but would have won had all the votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan, until an investigation decides whether those voters meant to vote for the senator.
The complaint goes further than confusion. It alleges that the presence of Sullivan Jr. on the ballot is part of a deliberate ploy to harm the incumbent, stating: “The sole purpose of his candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan.” Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher and school administrator from the small fishing community of Petersburg and a registered Republican, has denied that account, and Democrats have denied it as well.
The conditional nature of the suit is what has drawn the sharpest criticism. The department is not asking the court to keep anyone off the ballot or to change how votes are counted. It is asking for the power to stop certification only if the Republican loses — a one-way remedy that applies to a single outcome. Critics, including the state’s lawyers, say that structure reveals the suit’s purpose: not to protect the vote in general, but to protect one candidate’s path to victory.
The Two Sullivans: How the Ballot Confusion Began
The confusion at the heart of the case is real enough to have worried Alaska’s own election officials months ago. The state initially kept Sullivan Jr. off the ballot after determining that he intended to mislead voters with a name nearly identical to the incumbent’s. He sued, and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in June that his name should appear on the ballot. The state complied, and the two Sullivans have been on the ballot ever since.
The Justice Department did not try to keep Sullivan Jr. off the ballot at that stage. It waited until last week, days before the election, to file a suit that would give it a path to prevent certification of the result. That timing is central to the state’s argument: the department had months to raise its concerns about the ballot and chose instead to intervene only when the outcome was about to be decided. The state has also tried to reduce confusion on the ballot itself. To distinguish the two men, it lists the senator as the incumbent and a registered Republican, and Sullivan Jr. with no party affiliation. On the ballot, voters see “Dan S. Sullivan” identified as a registered Republican and the incumbent, while “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” carries no party label.
Also on the ballot is Mary Peltola, a Democrat and former member of Congress, who is challenging Sullivan for the seat. Polls have shown Peltola narrowly ahead, and the race is one of the few Senate contests this year where Democrats have a genuine chance to flip a Republican-held seat.
Trump weighed in on the ballot labels himself on Sunday, saying he believed the ballot was unfair and that the senator should be identified to voters as the sitting senator. “At least let him use the name Sen. Dan Sullivan as opposed to incumbent, because a lot of people don’t know what incumbent means,” he said.
Midterm Elections 2026: Trump Says He Ordered the Suit
The president has made no secret of his role. Speaking to reporters in Florida on Friday, where he had gone to cast his own early ballot, Trump said he directed the department to file the case. “I’m the one that said, ‘Do it,'” he said, a day after the department filed the suit in federal court in Anchorage. The admission turned a legal filing into a political event: a sitting president confirming on the record that he ordered his Justice Department to sue a state over a result that has not happened yet.
Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, spent Sunday defending the suit on the morning shows. On CBS’s Face the Nation, he told host Margaret Brennan that her summary of the case was “at best misleading, but really a lie to your viewers.” On CNN’s State of the Union, he told Dana Bash it was “crazy” to ask whether Trump was laying the groundwork for another January 6. “We’re not laying any groundwork for the president to do that,” he said. Blanche insisted Trump is not trying to overturn state election results “in any way, shape or form,” adding: “We wish that we didn’t have to do this. We hope for a resolution that works.”
The lawsuit did not arrive alone. On the same Monday the state moved to dismiss it, Trump offered a one-million-dollar reward to anyone whose report of voter fraud leads to an arrest and a conviction, an offer posted on Truth Social that covers fraud claims in past elections as well as the November 3 contest. Legal analysts have questioned both moves. CNN legal analyst Elie Honig called the department’s argument in the Alaska case “really misleading and really devious,” and predicted the department would lose. “So they’re going to lose,” he said. “To me it’s really just a question of when.”
The reaction inside Alaska has crossed party lines. Peltola called the lawsuit “corruption” in a post on X, and Senator Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s other Republican senator, also criticized it. Democrats in Congress have filed their own case seeking to block what they describe as election interference, pointing to the Alaska suit as one of the most aggressive uses of federal litigation in a Senate race. They argue the Alaska and California cases are part of a wider campaign, not isolated actions.
Battle for the Senate: Why Alaska Could Decide Control
The stakes extend well beyond one Senate seat. On November 3, voters will decide all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and about a third of the Senate. Republicans currently control Congress, and Democrats are forecast to make big gains, with the House widely expected to change hands. The Senate is a longer shot for Democrats, but they have an outside chance if they can flip a handful of Republican-held seats — and Alaska, where Peltola is running ahead in the polls, is one of them.
Early voting is already open in 45 states, and the election is seven days away. The Justice Department’s suit is the most direct intervention: a federal lawsuit filed before the election, aimed at a result that may not favor the president’s party. The state’s motion to dismiss is the most direct answer.
The case also fits a pattern in the campaign’s final days. The administration has sued to block certification in Alaska and demanded that California remove alleged noncitizens from its voter rolls, while the president has offered a million dollars for fraud tips. Supporters call it a defense of election integrity. Critics call it an attempt to cast doubt on the results before they are known.
What Happens Next: Judge Gleason and the Clock to November 3
The immediate question is how quickly Judge Gleason acts. The state asked on Monday to throw out the case, and the department will have a chance to respond. With voting already underway and Election Day a week away, any ruling will land in the final days of the campaign. If the judge dismisses the suit, certification in Alaska will proceed under the state’s normal process, and the ranked-choice count will determine the winner. If she lets the case proceed, the department will have a live path to ask for certification to be held up if Sullivan loses by a margin smaller than the votes won by his namesake.
Alaska’s vote counts are famously slow, and the ranked-choice system adds rounds of tabulation, so a close result may not be known for days after November 3 in any event. A court fight over certification would stretch that timeline further and keep the race in the national spotlight long after most other contests are decided.
Beyond Alaska, both sides will be watching for the precedent. If the state’s argument prevails — that the United States has no authority to intervene in a state election on behalf of a favored candidate — it would narrow the department’s ability to bring similar cases elsewhere. If the department’s argument prevails, it would establish that the federal government can ask a court to hold up certification of a state election result.
Source: The Washington Post