Judge Dismisses Trump DOJ Attempt to Block Alaska Senate Certification Amid Candidate Controversy
A federal judge rejected a DOJ lawsuit seeking to halt Alaska's Senate election certification, citing 'infeasible' methods to protect voter ballot privacy.
POLICY WIRE — Anchorage, Alaska — A federal judge has thrown out a legal challenge from the Justice Department that sought to prevent the certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan were to lose.
Sullivan, a close political ally of President Donald Trump, is currently battling former U.S. Representative Mary Peltola in a high-stakes contest that could determine the party control of the Senate. The ranked-choice election held Tuesday was complicated by two other candidates with minimal presence, one of whom shares the incumbent’s first name.
The federal lawsuit was initiated less than two weeks before the vote while early voting was already active. It requested a judicial inquiry to verify whether ballots cast for a retired teacher named Dan J. Sullivan were actually intended for the sitting senator. State authorities dismissed the claims as meritless, noting that identifying specific voters would be impossible without infringing on their privacy.
In an order issued Sunday, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that the federal government’s requested remedy was “infeasible” because a significant portion of the electorate had already voted. She pointed out that the processed ballots have been merged to such an extent that individual identities can no longer be distinguished.
More fundamentally, the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified ‘investigation’ of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy, the judge noted.
The legal setback follows comments from Senator Sullivan on Sunday, who expressed skepticism regarding Peltola’s claims that she was unaware her top staff recruited a retired schoolteacher to the ballot to confuse voters during this critical race.
Republicans have long alleged that the former congresswoman orchestrated the appearance of the second Sullivan. They claim these suspicions were validated by a recent New York Times report, which drew on interviews with Peltola’s former campaign manager, text communications, and financial records showing an operative paid by a Peltola-backed group to seek decoy candidates.
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“There is no way this went on for a year that they weren’t informing her,” Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” two days before the election. He added, “She got caught lying, and she’s still lying to the Alaskan people, the media, to all of us.”
Peltola has denied any involvement in the recruitment of the other Sullivan, labeling the controversy as a “distraction” from critical issues like rising costs linked to the Iranian war started by Trump. Both her campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have issued denials regarding the allegations.
When questioned by KTUU before a Friday rally regarding whether a staff member could have brought the rival candidate on, Peltola stated, I have no idea, before repeating, “I honestly have no idea.”
Reporting by Policy-Wire (PW)
