The federal government sued Alaska elections officials this week as part of an attempt to preemptively line up a challenge to the results should Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan lose his race.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, centers around the claim that a second candidate who shares a name with incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan is only running “for the purpose of confusing or misleading voters and compromising the fairness of the ballot,” according to the filing.
The race is currently one of the most competitive in the country and has the potential to swing the balance of power in Congress’ upper chamber.
The case, filed less than two weeks before Election Day, is before Judge Sharon L. Gleason, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
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The second Dan Sullivan — who will appear as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the ballot — filed to run three days before the filing deadline. The Trump administration’s lawsuit makes the case that if the incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, an investigation should be carried out determining whether voters were confused about which Sullivan they were voting for before certifying any election results.
“It is vital that Defendants not certify any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion,” lawyers for the Department of Justice wrote in the filing. “An election 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 Sulivan and Alaska’s ranked-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election.”
Previous efforts by the Alaska Division of Elections and the state Republican Party to prevent the new Sullivan from running against the incumbent senator failed earlier this year when the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that both Sullivans could remain on the ballot.
On Thursday, Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out the possibility that his department would intervene in states’ independent processes for certifying their midterm elections, saying extreme scenarios could prompt federal intervention.
In a Truth Social post earlier this week, President Donald Trump said his administration was looking at “powerful legal options to remove the fraudulent Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. from the ballot.”
“I am very concerned about the Dan S. Sullivan Race for the U.S. Senate in Alaska in that it is totally confusing,” Trump wrote in the post.
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