Alaska Attorneys Call Trump’s Bid to Set Aside Senate Ballots ‘Meritless’ and Impossible
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska’s Republican-led government asked a federal judge on Saturday to throw out a lawsuit brought at President Donald Trump’s direction seeking to block certification of a potential Democratic victory in the state’s closely watched U.S. Senate contest. State attorneys said there was “no reason for this Court to entertain this meritless lawsuit any longer.”
The sharply worded response from the Alaska attorney general’s office followed U.S. District Court Judge Sharon L. Gleason’s Saturday deadline for submissions on whether the case should be dismissed without a hearing. Filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, the complaint has drawn widespread criticism from election law specialists. It asks the court to prevent certification of a possible win by Democrat Mary Peltola while officials determine whether voters were confused by another candidate who shared a name with her principal Republican opponent, Sen. Dan Sullivan.
On Friday, the Justice Department also asked the judge to isolate every ballot cast for the second Dan Sullivan. The department said those ballots should be reviewed to determine whether voters had mistakenly supported a spoiler candidate. Alaska officials called the proposal “both disturbing and impossible,” arguing that separating those votes could not be done without compromising ballot secrecy.
Trump has separately called for Peltola to face prosecution after The New York Times reported that internal messages and online posts appeared to indicate Democratic campaign operatives helped recruit the second Sullivan, a retired teacher from the remote fishing community of Petersburg, to run. However, the state’s filing emphasized that the ballot clearly differentiates the two men: the senator is identified as the Republican incumbent, while the other candidate appears only as “Daniel J. Sullivan.”
“State officials carefully designed the ballot to minimize voter confusion,” Alaska attorneys wrote. They urged the court to dismiss the case with prejudice and allow election officials to proceed with the general election, including counting ballots and certifying the results, without what they described as unwarranted federal intervention.
