Trump administration sues to block certification of Alaska Senate race if Dan Sullivan loses

The Trump administration has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop Alaska from certifying the results of its closely watched Senate election if Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses, arguing that the presence of another candidate with the same name on the ballot risks misleading voters.

In the suit, filed on Thursday, the justice department said the inclusion of a second Dan Sullivan could cause some people to mistakenly cast their ballots for the wrong candidate. The government wants a judge to bar the state from certifying the outcome should the senator lose by a margin smaller than the vote total collected by the other Sullivan.

Polls suggest the contest between Senator Sullivan and Democratic challenger Mary Peltola is extremely close, with Peltola holding a narrow lead in the final days before the 3 November vote. The senator will appear on the ballot as the Republican incumbent.

President Donald Trump took personal ownership of the legal effort on Friday, telling reporters "I'm the one that said do it" when asked about the lawsuit after landing in Florida for a campaign rally. He has previously described the second Sullivan's candidacy as a "scam" and said his administration was examining "powerful legal options" to end it.

The other candidate is a retired teacher who also worked for the US Forest Service. He was reportedly once a member of the Alaska Independence Party before registering as a Republican earlier this year, and previous attempts to remove him from the ballot have already been rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court. He has denied his candidacy has an ulterior motive.

In court documents, Associate Attorney General Stanley E Woodward Jr asserted that the sole purpose of the second candidacy was to benefit Peltola's campaign by reducing the number of votes for the senator. "Given the substantial likelihood that the inclusion of Dan J Sullivan will confuse or mislead voters looking to cast a vote for Senator Sullivan and thus distort the will of Alaskan voters, there is a substantial likelihood that a certification of the election will reflect an electoral process that lacked integrity," Woodward argued. The justice department said Alaska "will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its elections" if it accepts any results "tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J Sullivan".

Dan J Sullivan has repeatedly rejected those claims, telling the local Petersburg Pilot newspaper earlier this year that he "wouldn't even know who to speak to" in Peltola's campaign. Speaking separately to Courthouse News, he said it was his "sincere hope that people know who and what they are voting for but, ultimately, choice is good and voters' intent will be as varied as the candidates who are running".

Under Alaska's ranked-choice voting system, voters who are unsure at the ballot box could select both Sullivans. If Peltola wins and the margin of loss suggests possible confusion, the lawsuit calls for certification to be delayed pending an investigation into whether voters mixed up the names, along with any "necessary and appropriate" steps to determine what would have happened had the second Sullivan been kept off the ballot.

Neither candidate has so far commented on the lawsuit. The Senate race in Alaska, a state Trump won by 14 percentage points in 2024, is among the most closely watched in the upcoming midterm elections, and the president's approval ratings there have been badly hit by voter disapproval of rising prices and the war in Iran.