The Trump administration has preemptively filed a lawsuit to block the certification of the Alaska Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses the race, citing name confusion among the candidates.
Republicans have alleged that Alaska Senate candidate Dan J. Sullivan is running a sham campaign to purposefully confuse voters and draw votes away from incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan based on their names being similar.
An earlier legal challenge to the candidacy was rejected by Alaska’s supreme court, which ordered that Dan J. Sullivan be included on the ballot.
“Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan … the State and its officers will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election,” the number-three ranking official at the Department of Justice, Stanley Woodward, wrote in the Thursday filing.
In bringing the case, the Justice Department says it’s guarding against the possibility that Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses in a manner that suggests he would have won were it not for votes cast for Dan J. Sullivan. The incumbent senator is facing Democratic challenger Mary Peltola, as well as Dan J. Sullivan, who is appearing on the ballot without a party affiliation.
“To guard against this danger, it is vital that Defendants not certify any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion. An election result may be impacted by voter confusion if: (1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska’s rank-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election,” Woodward wrote.
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement, “Alaska’s Division of Elections determined that Mr. Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy was intended to mislead voters and compromise the fairness of the ballot. Therefore, the Justice Department, consistent with the National Voter Registration Act enacted by Congress, is taking the necessary steps to ensure that this frivolous candidacy does not undermine the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters.”
The Alaska Secretary of State’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News. Campaign spokespeople for Peltola, Sen. Sullivan and Dan J. Sullivan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted on social media that he was looking at “powerful legal options” to remove Dan. J Sullivan from the ballot.
Over the summer, Alaska’s election office said that Dan J. Sullivan would be removed from the ballot because the office determined his candidacy was not in good faith, but was meant, per an official, “to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”
Dan. J Sullivan then sued the state over the decision, and a state judge ruled that he was eligible to be on Alaska’s Senate primary ballot. The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the ruling, after which the DOJ began investigating.
Fielding questions from reporters just hours before the lawsuit was filed, Attorney General Todd Blanche wouldn’t rule out the DOJ intervening in a state’s election process, but suggested only a “doomsday scenario” would warrant such action.
“I mean, is there any scenario? Yes, of course. There’s scenarios that we could all come up with hypothetically, you know, some doomsday scenario, for example, right?” Blanche said. “It is not DOJ’s intention to, and it’s never our intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state confirmation process or certification process.”
ABC News’ Devin Dwyer contributed to this report.
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