Editor’s note, November 14, 2026: I have folded our earlier Alaska Senate posts into this living column and updated the count through November 9. Later developments, including the ranked-choice tabulation, will be added here instead of as a new URL.
The Justice Department’s Alaska Senate lawsuit is over, at least for now. On Sunday, November 1, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the Trump administration’s bid to block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, the Alaska Beacon reported. The department said it would appeal less than two hours later.
I think the judge got this one right. The fake Dan Sullivan problem is real, and it deserved a serious look. A last-minute federal suit was never the fix.
What the Lawsuit Asked For
The suit targeted Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg who shares a name with the senator. He and Republican Gerald Heikes of Palmer were the third and fourth candidates in the four-person race. Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman, was the main challenger.
President Trump said he ordered the case. The Justice Department argued that the second Sullivan’s name could divert votes from the senator and help Peltola. It wanted the state to set aside every ballot cast for the other Sullivan so investigators could look for voter confusion, and to block certification if Sen. Sullivan lost and would have won had every vote for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. gone to him instead under Alaska’s ranked-choice count.
The original claim relied on the National Voter Registration Act. The filing, signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, said the goal was “to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska.” “For example, some supporters of Senator Sullivan likely will inadvertently vote for Daniel J. Sullivan,” the complaint said. It also claimed “the sole purpose” of the second candidacy “is to benefit the Peltola campaign.”
On October 29, DOJ amended the complaint to cite a New York Times report on alleged efforts by people tied to Peltola’s campaign to recruit spoiler candidates, CBS News reported. The amendment added a second claim under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, arguing the court needed to step in to stop a “conspiracy.”
The second Sullivan’s spot on the ballot had already been tested once. His candidacy was challenged in state court earlier this year, and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
Who Is the Other Dan Sullivan?
Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is a Petersburg resident and former teacher who had never run for office. He filed on or about May 29, asked to appear as “Dan Sullivan,” and listed himself as a Republican even though state records showed no past tie to the party. On June 15, Alaska’s Division of Elections found his filing was made “with a purpose to confuse or mislead,” according to the federal complaint.
Even so, Alaska’s courts put him back on the ballot, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed that in June. The court said the state can only check basics like age and residency, not a candidate’s intentions. He told Courthouse News in August that he is running out of frustration with the senator. “It’s a free country,” he said. He told the Associated Press in June that his candidacy is no sham. In the August all-party primary, he took 2.5%. Peltola won 49.5%, and Sen. Sullivan won 41.4%.
The ballot already tells the two men apart. The incumbent appears as “Dan S. Sullivan,” marked as the registered Republican and the incumbent. The other appears as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” with no party listed. Alaska’s other senator, Lisa Murkowski, put it plainly on X: “Alaskans don’t need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year’s ballot. The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit.”
Why the Judge Dismissed the Case
Gleason, an Obama appointee and the most senior federal judge in Alaska, ruled in a 20-page order that the government lacked standing. The core problem was simple. DOJ never explained how its plan could work without breaking the secret ballot.
On October 30, Woodward had asked the judge to order state officials to “preserve and segregate all ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan for the purposes of investigating whether such ranking was the product of voter confusion, should such an investigation become necessary.” He called them “modest precautionary measures” that would be “impossible after Election Day,” and asked the judge to act before Monday. The filing did not spell out a process for reviewing ballots, NBC News noted. Nor did it explain how a ballot could prove a voter was confused.
The state made that point in its own filings. “No pattern of ballot markings will reveal any voter’s reason for voting for Daniel J.,” state attorneys wrote. Ballots cannot be traced back to voters, they added, so any follow-up investigation “would require violating that secrecy.” The state also said the amended complaint still “rests on the same meritless theory” that the National Voter Registration Act governs a case that “has nothing to do with voter registration.”
The judge agreed. “The absence of any explanation from the United States as to how its requested relief could redress its alleged injury while simultaneously maintaining the secrecy of the ballot is telling,” Gleason wrote, NPR reported. She added that DOJ “provides no workable plan” for segregating ballots and then conducting an unspecified “investigation” of them while preserving voter secrecy. Separating those ballots so law enforcement could investigate the voters behind them “clearly (violates) Alaskans’ right to a secret ballot,” she wrote.
Normally a plaintiff gets a chance to fix a complaint. Here, she denied DOJ that chance, because the election was only two days away and an amendment would be unfair to the state.
A DOJ spokesperson said the court ruled “on procedural grounds” and did not dispute the claim that the second Sullivan entered the race to confuse voters. “Alaskan voters deserve a fair election, not to be misled in an attempt to rig outcomes,” the spokesperson told CBS News. The appeal faced long odds even then. The 9th Circuit may not have acted until after Election Day, and an appeal could become moot if Sullivan won, or if Peltola won by more than the other Sullivan’s vote total.
The Criminal Probe Is the Right Channel
The alleged scheme still deserves answers. On October 28, the New York Times reported that the Peltola campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee worked to recruit a candidate with the same name as Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. The Times cited interviews with 12 people who were involved in or told about the plan, or were contacted as possible recruits, plus dozens of text messages. A Peltola spokesperson has said the campaign “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.” A DSCC spokesperson said, “The DSCC is not involved with Dan J. Sullivan.”
There are complications. Part of the Times report drew on Elisa Rios, Peltola’s former campaign manager, who was fired in August. Rios later contacted the Times and “retracted all statements made regarding the 2026 Alaska Senate Race,” according to NBC. The Times did not report any evidence that Dan J. Sullivan was coerced, and he has said he entered the race on his own.
The Justice Department issued at least three dozen new subpoenas and document preservation requests in late October, a U.S. official confirmed to NBC News. CNN later put the figure at more than 40 after the Times report. A grand jury had already issued subpoenas in August for information from witnesses linked to Dan J. Sullivan’s campaign. U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman said at an October 30 press conference in Anchorage that “there is both a civil investigation and a criminal investigation that is ongoing,” and that “there is a surge of FBI resources and resources in this office.” He would not name a statute, a target or a possible crime. No one in the race has been charged.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy directed the Department of Public Safety to determine “whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted.” “The evidence will determine what happens next,” he wrote. That is the right tone.
I want the facts. If operatives tried to confuse voters with a look-alike name, that deserves a real investigation and, if the facts support it, a charge. Election law experts have been skeptical that recruiting a look-alike candidate is a crime by itself, absent money, threats, false filings or lies to investigators. The Times itself noted that ballot stacking is common and generally legal. Prosecutors have to prove a crime, not just a dirty trick. Subpoenas are a step toward answers, not a verdict.
President Trump called it “voter fraud at the highest level” and said Peltola “should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted, and so should the fake Dan Sullivan.” His frustration is fair. Due process still applies, even for opponents.
Sullivan Took the Right Posture
On CNN’s “State of the Union” on November 1, Sen. Sullivan said, “I’m sure I’m going to lose a lot of votes to that trickery.” He also said he doubts Peltola’s claim that she did not know what her top aides were doing. “There is no way this went on for a year that they weren’t informing her,” he said. Peltola denies any involvement. “I am not interested in tricking voters,” she said at a campaign event. At a Friday rally she added that she was “so deeply offended by these accusations about having any involvement with anyone else’s candidacy.”
Even so, Sullivan said he would accept the results, win or lose, NPR reported. That is exactly what a conservative should say. I expect the other side to accept losses. Therefore, we should hold ourselves to the same standard.
Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters, when the suit was filed, that the department never intends to “improperly interfere” with certification. “I’m not trying to not have an election certified. Of course not,” he said. Yet that is what the filing asked a judge to allow. There is a gap between removing a sham candidate from a ballot in the spring and holding up certification of a finished election in November. The second is far more dangerous.
Ranked-Choice Voting Made This Easier to Game
Alaska’s ranked-choice system turned a name game into a strategy. If no candidate tops 50% of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots move to each voter’s next choice. The process repeats until someone has a majority. A voter who means to pick the senator but marks Dan J. Sullivan first may still help the senator later, if that voter ranked him second. A voter who ranks only one name, or ranks the wrong Sullivan and stops there, may never be counted for the candidate he actually wanted.
Sen. Sullivan told Fox News’ Sean Hannity how to mark the ballot. Rank him first, he said, the other Republican second, and then, “in our screwed-up system, you rank the fake guy third.” A state official told CNN that even well-informed voters have filled out Alaska Senate ballots wrong and asked for new ones. It is unclear how many of those spoiled ballots involved the two Sullivans. Even a small amount of confusion is a reason to print clearer names and parties. It is not, by itself, a reason to delay certification on a theory the state said the law does not support.
The bigger fix belongs to Juneau, not to another lawsuit from Washington. State lawmakers can write clearer ballot rules for candidates who share a name. Voters can scrap the ranked-choice system that made this mess cheaper to run. A state that wrote the rules can rewrite them. I made a similar point in the California mail-ballot case: last-minute federal lawsuits are a poor substitute for earlier, clearer state rules.
The Count, and What Comes Next
As of November 9, Peltola led Sen. Sullivan 106,321 to 103,804 in first-choice votes, or 48.6% to 47.5%, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Dan J. Sullivan had 3,651 votes and Heikes 4,865. With no one above 50%, a ranked-choice tabulation was expected November 18 and certification November 25. I will update this column when those numbers are official.
The slow count is not, by itself, a red flag. Officials held back some absentee and early ballots to cross-check Election Day poll registers. That step keeps anyone from voting twice. The division also publishes its cast vote record so anyone can check the tabulation. Over 86,700 Alaskans had already voted early by the weekend before Election Day, NPR reported, citing the Alaska Division of Elections.
Nationally, Democrats regained control of both the House and Senate on November 3. I wrote separately about why the midterm results do not support a stolen-election claim, and about the voter ID measures that passed on the same ballot. Alaska’s race should be finished under Alaska’s law, with a secret ballot and a public count. Investigate fraud through prosecutors and evidence. Fix the ballot through the Legislature. That is how conservatives protect election integrity without handing Washington the keys.
Sources
- NBC News: DOJ asks Gleason to segregate ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan
- CNBC: Heyman confirms civil and criminal probes; state dismissal arguments
- CNN: more than 40 grand jury subpoenas after the Times report; Heyman recusal context
- Alaska Beacon reporting on Gleason’s dismissal and the November count
- Anchorage Daily News: unofficial first-choice totals as of November 9, 2026
- Alaska Division of Elections: 2026 General Election results
- NPR, CBS News, Courthouse News, and the Associated Press contemporaneous reporting on the suit, the second Sullivan’s filing, and Sullivan’s “State of the Union” remarks
- New York Times reporting, as cited by NBC News, on alleged recruitment of a look-alike candidate
