DOJ Says Close Alaska Peltola Win Would Be ‘Tainted Victory’ - Newsweek

The Trump administration has said a narrow victory for the Democratic candidate in Alaska’s Senate race would be a “tainted victory” because the ballot will contain a near namesake of incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan.

The Justice Department made the claim on Tuesday in a lawsuit it filed last week seeking to block the certification of the election’s result if Sullivan loses to Democratic challenger Mary Peltola by a margin less than the number cast for retired teacher Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.

“Many polls indicate that the race between Senator Sullivan and Peltola will be within one or two percentage points, and Mr. Sullivan received 2.5 percent of the vote in the primary election,” the filing said. “Thus, there is a realistic chance that, even if a majority of Alaskans wish to vote for Senator Sullivan, Mr. Sullivan’s presence on the ballot will result in a tainted victory for Peltola.”

The filing asked the judge to prevent Peltola’s campaign and voting rights group League of Women Voters of Alaska's requests to intervene in the case. If granted permission by the judge, both would pursue motions for the court to dismiss the case.

"Beyond positing hypothetical future motives, Proposed Intervenors fail to even allege how they would be litigating this case differently than Defendants," the Justice Department said. The lawsuit names the state of Alaska and election officials as defendants.

“At best they will clog up the docket with duplicative motions full of charged (and inaccurate) rhetoric. All in defense of a sham candidate," the department added.

The filing is the latest in a series of rapid fire court papers. Presiding Judge Sharon L. Gleason imposed an emergency schedule Monday. The schedule gave the government until 5 p.m. Tuesday to respond.

Peltola’s campaign and the voting rights groups have until noon on Wednesday to reply, and the judge said she intends to rule on the motions to dismiss by 5 p.m. on Thursday.

The current senator is listed as the “incumbent” on the ballot, where he is listed as “Dan Sullivan” and a “Republican.” His namesake contender is listed as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” and has no party affiliation.

Newsweek contacted Peltola’s campaign for comment by email on Wednesday morning.

Under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, the top four candidates from each respective primary in the state earlier this year—including for Senate, governor, and U.S. House—are set to appear on the ballot on November 3, regardless of party affiliation.

Among the four candidates on the ballot for the state Senate race there are one Democrat, Peltola, and three Republicans, including incumbent Dan Sullivan, retired teacher and fishing enthusiast Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., and Gerald Heikes.

Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. was a member of the Alaska Independence Party until it dissolved earlier this year. He only registered as a Republican when filing his candidacy for the Senate race, fueling Republicans’ claims that he was running a sham campaign.

Alaska election officials initially agreed that his candidacy was intended to confuse voters, and sought to exclude him from the ballot. But Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. was reinstated on the ballot after an Alaska trial court ruled against that exclusion and the Alaska Supreme Court summarily affirmed that decision.

According to the lawsuit filed by the Justice Department, “the sole purpose of [Daniel J. Sullivan’s] candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan.”

What the Trump administration is seeking with its legal action, is to block the Alaska Senate results from being certified if the incumbent does not win the election and if he would have won the election “had all votes cast for Dan J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska’s rank-choice process played out accordingly.”

It would also require an investigation into whether Alaskans who cast their vote for Daniel J. Sullivan intended to vote for the incumbent, and it would allow further procedures to determine what the election result would have been without the alleged voter confusion.

“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,” a DOJ spokesperson told Newsweek. “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.”

But Peltola’s campaign has expressed concern that the Justice Department might use the pending lawsuit “to falsely suggest that there is doubt about the lawfulness of Alaska’s election results, without any legal basis, to lay the groundwork for unlawful efforts to challenge a potential Peltola victory.” To avoid this, it has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit before Election Day.

Nonpartisan organization FairVote has also minimized the Trump administration concerns, writing in a recent analysis that “ranked choice voting addresses partisan gaming head-on. Voters get more choices without fear of splitting the vote—whether that’s the ‘two Dan Sullivans’ in the Senate race, or multiple Republicans in the governor’s race. [...] This type of gamesmanship exists in any election system, but RCV makes it much less effective. With RCV, any small number of voters uncertain about the ‘Dan Sullivans’ can rank both candidates on their ballot, and their vote will count for the stronger candidate (extremely likely to be Senator Sullivan).”

With six days to go before Election Day, the Alaska Senate race remains one of the most competitive in the country. Peltola has enjoyed a narrow lead over Sullivan in all polls published this month, with the latest—a poll released by progressive pollster Data for Progress and conducted between October 8 and October 16 among 675 likely voters—giving her a +3 net margin over the incumbent in the first round and a +2 net margin in the final round.

Should she win the election, a Democrat would occupy a seat which the party has not won since 2008 and help Democrats gain grounds in their efforts to win control of the U.S. Senate, where Republicans currently have a narrow majority of 53-47.