The Trump Justice Department has sued to block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate election if a same-name spoiler costs Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan the seat, a step the president says he ordered to stop cheating at the ballot box.
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department filed a preemptive lawsuit aimed at Alaska election officials, seeking to halt certification if the Republican incumbent loses and votes for a second candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan would have changed the outcome. The suit targets what the department calls a frivolous candidacy meant to confuse voters in a close race against Democrat Mary Peltola.
Trump told reporters in Florida on Friday that he personally directed the action. “Well, I’m the one that said ‘do it,’” he said, framing the dual-Sullivan ballot as a scheme rather than an accident. The filing lands months before ranked-choice tabulation is set to begin and after Alaska’s own courts already kept the second Sullivan on the ballot.
Alaska runs a top-four primary followed by a ranked-choice general election. Voters rank candidates. If no one wins a majority, the lowest finishers are eliminated and their second-choice votes are reassigned until someone clears 50 percent. Officials expect that process to start November 18, more than two weeks after the November 3, 2026, Election Day, once overseas ballots arrive.
In the primary, Sen. Dan S. Sullivan took 68,726 votes. Daniel J. Sullivan took 4,107. Both advanced. On the sample ballot, the incumbent is labeled “Registered Republican” and “incumbent.” The other Sullivan appears without a party affiliation, a distinction state officials added after earlier fights over the name.
CNN reported that the Justice Department complaint argues the United States is injured when a federal election certification is tainted by a frivolous candidacy that undercuts confidence in the government. The suit asks a court to declare certification unlawful if it was “impacted by voter confusion” and to block officials from certifying until an investigation examines whether voters who meant to support the senator instead marked the other Sullivan.
The complaint states the problem in plain terms: even if a majority of Alaskans want Senator Sullivan, Daniel J. Sullivan’s presence “will result in a victory for Peltola” if confused voters fail to rank the incumbent or rank the spoiler ahead of him and those ballots later flow to the Democrat in later rounds.
Trump has hammered the issue for weeks. At a rally in Wasilla, Alaska, this month he said of the two Dan Sullivans, “It’s just cheating.” He added, “They found a guy named Dan Sullivan. They put him up to get a little confused.”
Breitbart reported that Trump ordered the lawsuit to block certification of an Alaska Senate result if Republicans lose, and that the complaint itself alleges the sole purpose of the second candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by cutting into Senator Sullivan’s vote total. Attorney General Todd Blanche has declined to rule out further steps in a worst-case election scenario.
The department’s public line tracks that claim. A DOJ spokesperson said Alaska’s Division of Elections determined that Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy “was intended to mislead voters and compromise the fairness of the ballot.” The spokesperson said the Justice Department is acting under the National Voter Registration Act to keep that frivolous candidacy from undermining the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters.
Sen. Sullivan’s campaign is letting the case proceed. Spokesman Nate Adams said the senator will “let the DOJ complaint run its course.” Adams added that Alaskans can tell the difference between “a Democrat sideshow and Senator Sullivan’s strong record of delivering for Alaska, a record he’ll keep building on for the next six years.”
That stance fits a broader pattern of the president using direct executive tools when he sees a process tilted against Republicans, much as he has moved on housing costs for American homebuyers with orders aimed at immediate relief rather than waiting on a slow Congress.
Peltola’s team cast the filing as an attack on the election itself. Spokesperson Harry Child called it “a despicable political threat to overturn an election.” Child said the campaign will fight to ensure every eligible Alaska voter is heard and that “no bureaucrat or politician from the Lower 48 can interfere with our lawful, secure elections.”
"This is a despicable political threat to overturn an election."
Alaska’s other Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, who is not on the ballot this cycle, joined the criticism. In a post on X she wrote that Alaskans do not need help voting for their preferred candidates and that the state has already distinguished the candidates clearly on this year’s ballot. “The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit,” she said.
Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats in November to take control. Alaska is one of the races they are watching. The Washington Examiner noted the contest is a toss-up between Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and Mary Peltola, with single-digit polling margins, and that a second candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. further complicates the ballot.
Little reliable polling exists on the Alaska race, which only raises the stakes of any name-based leakage in ranked-choice rounds. The president has shown he will press federal leverage when he believes a result is being gamed, the same posture visible when he warned that Ilhan Omar could face jail or deportation over conduct he brands a disgrace.
State officials tried to clear the field earlier. Alaska’s Division of Elections removed Daniel J. Sullivan. In June the Alaska Supreme Court ruled he must stay on the ballot. Former state attorney general Bruce Botelho, a Democrat, called the new federal lawsuit “unprecedented” and said the state high court’s earlier ruling “is the final word on interpretation of election Alaska election law.”
Election law professor Derek Muller of Notre Dame Law School called the Justice Department’s legal theory “strange and unusual.” He said the department is plucking language from the preface of a federal voter-registration statute and claiming a free-wheeling right to enjoin state operations, a claim he doubts any court will accept.
"They’re just plucking from the preface and saying this gives them a free-wheeling right to enjoin operations in a state, and I just don’t think a court is going to buy that."
Muller also noted the practical problem: measuring after the fact which voters meant to support the incumbent is “just the stuff that is just impossible to measure.” He observed that Alaska officials already reduced confusion with middle initials, the incumbent label, and by omitting a GOP designation for the other Sullivan. He called the suit “friendly fire” against Republicans in Alaska and predicted state officials will not welcome it.
Vanita Gupta, who served as associate attorney general in the Biden administration, labeled the case “meritless.” She said no federal statute authorizes the relief sought and that the Alaska Supreme Court has already decided the candidate stays on the ballot. “The Constitution gives Alaska, not the US Justice Department, the authority over who’s on its ballot, how its votes are counted, and the certification of the election,” Gupta said.
Election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, once the Republican National Committee’s top election counsel, was blunt about the politics. “I think they must have a client who is demanding it,” he said. “There is not a rational legal reason to do it.” Ginsberg noted the filing came from a political appointee’s office in Washington that does not normally spearhead this kind of case, and he pointed to a recent U.S. Supreme Court action freezing a lower-court block on a New Hampshire voter-ID policy under the principle that federal courts should not revise voting rules close to an election.
Those court fights over election timing and executive reach echo other battles, including when the Supreme Court blocked a Trump administration halt on prison gender treatments over sharp dissents from Justices Alito and Thomas.
The new case has been assigned to Judge Sharon L. Gleason, appointed by President Barack Obama. The administration has not yet sought emergency relief or immediate action. The complaint points to the preface of the National Voter Registration Act and its language protecting the “integrity of the electoral process” as the hook for federal court power to intervene.
"The United States likewise suffers an injury when the certification of the election for a federal office is tainted by a frivolous candidacy because that undermines confidence in the make-up and workings of the federal government."
That is the core claim. If voters who intended to back Sen. Dan Sullivan instead mark Daniel J. Sullivan, or rank him higher, those ballots can migrate to Peltola once the spoiler is eliminated. In a race decided by a few thousand votes, a few thousand confused rankings matter. The Division of Elections itself, according to the DOJ, already concluded the second candidacy was designed to mislead.
Critics insist the ballot labels solve the problem and that only Alaska may run its own elections. Supporters of the suit counter that labels do not erase the risk when two men share the same common name on a ranked-choice ballot and one of them drew more than 4,000 primary votes with no serious campaign footprint. Trump’s answer is direct federal action rather than hope that voters sort it out unaided.
That same preference for decisive moves showed when he brought American Stephen Hubbard home from a Russian prison with no prisoner swap, cutting through process to secure a concrete result.
The Justice Department wants a declaration that any certification tainted by the confusion is unlawful. It wants a hold on certification until officials investigate whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant for the senator. If the incumbent loses, but would have won had every ballot for the other Sullivan gone to him instead, the department wants the court to stop the result from being locked in.
How such an investigation would work on co-mingled ranked-choice ballots is left open. Muller’s point stands: after the fact, intent is hard to prove. The department is still asking the court to keep that door open rather than accept a Peltola win that may rest on name mix-ups.
Peltola’s camp frames any delay as Lower 48 interference. Sullivan’s camp says voters can separate a sideshow from a six-year record. Murkowski says the state already fixed the ballot and the department should stay out. Trump says he ordered the case because the setup is cheating, and the DOJ says Alaska’s own elections division spotted the intent to mislead.
The November 3 election will still be held. Ranked-choice counting is still scheduled to start November 18. The lawsuit sits in the background as a conditional brake, one that only engages if the incumbent falls and the spoiler’s votes are the difference. Democrats calling it an attempt to overturn an election are describing a case that has not yet changed a single certified tally.
Name confusion on a ranked ballot is not a theoretical problem. It is a measurable risk in a toss-up seat that could decide Senate control. The Trump Justice Department has put that risk on the record and asked a federal judge to keep certification from rubber-stamping it. Courts may reject the theory. Voters still deserve a process that does not reward a spoiler planted to siphon Republican support. Integrity is not optional just because the other side calls the fix “despicable.”