Democrats have their eyes on an Alaska Senate seat the Left hasn’t held since 2008.
Republicans spotted something on the ballot they say could hand it to them.
And President Trump just made a move that could keep this race from ending on Election Night.
Trump Wants a Judge Watching Alaska’s Count Before Anyone Calls It
President Trump sued the state of Alaska in federal court less than two weeks before the November 3 election, and his target is about as specific as a lawsuit gets.
If US Senator Dan S Sullivan (R-AK) loses to former Congresswoman Mary Peltola (D-AK), and the ballots cast for a retired Petersburg teacher named Daniel J Sullivan would have carried the senator to victory, the Trump administration wants a federal judge to stop the state from certifying a winner until someone sorts out what those voters actually meant.
The Justice Department filed the complaint. Its lawyers warn that the second Sullivan “threatens to mislead Alaskan citizens who want to vote for Senator Sullivan,” and that some of the senator’s backers “likely will inadvertently vote” for the namesake instead.
But the complaint goes further. It claims other Sullivan supporters, staring at three Republicans on one ballot, “might not rank Senator Sullivan at all.”
Trump previewed the fight on Truth Social. “It’s ridiculous that the Court didn’t stop this SCAM,” he wrote. “Even 1, 2, or 3% could make the difference.”
And he didn’t stop there. Trump called the whole setup “CHEATING in an Election, and the Judge that allowed this to happen should be ashamed of himself.”
How a Retired Teacher Landed Next to a Sitting Senator
Daniel J Sullivan filed for the seat in late May. Within days, the National Republican Senatorial Committee fired off a letter to state election officials, and Republican Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom opened an investigation, citing “credible allegations” that he jumped in “in coordination with another candidate and campaign.”
Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher then pulled him off the ballot. She found he had registered to vote as Daniel J Sullivan Jr and had switched his registration to Republican, a party he never belonged to before, right as his candidacy got rolling.
Beecher concluded the run existed “for the purpose of confusing or misleading voters and compromising the fairness of the ballot.” The Justice Department quotes that exact line in its lawsuit.
But Superior Court Judge Thomas A Matthews overruled her, and the Alaska Supreme Court backed him in a short order. Attorneys general from 14 Republican-led states had begged the high court to keep the challenger off. It made no difference.
The challenger denies any scheme. Asked whether he’d had contact with Peltola’s campaign, he answered, “zero, none, zilch.” Peltola’s campaign and the Alaska Democratic Party both deny any role in his candidacy.
State officials ended up printing the senator as the Republican incumbent and listing the challenger with no party label whatsoever. Another Republican, Gerald Heikes, also appears on the ballot alongside Peltola.
Ranked-Choice Voting Turns a Nuisance Into a Real Threat
Here’s the piece national coverage keeps skating past.
In an old-fashioned, pick-one election, a namesake candidate costs a senator a handful of stray votes. Irritating, sure. But Alaska doesn’t run old-fashioned elections anymore.
Alaskans narrowly approved open primaries and ranked-choice voting in 2020. Under that system, a voter who marks the wrong Sullivan first, or who quits ranking after one or two names, can watch his ballot drop out of the count before the final round ever shows up.
And Alaska already has a test case.
In the August 2022 special election for the state’s lone House seat, Peltola grabbed about 40 percent of first-choice votes. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, both Republicans, split close to 60 percent between them.
Peltola won anyway. Once the count eliminated Begich, roughly 27,000 of his ballots moved to Palin, about 15,000 moved to Peltola, and more than 11,000 listed nobody else and simply quit counting. Peltola edged Palin 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent.
That math sits underneath every page of Trump’s lawsuit. Republicans don’t need a tidal wave of confused voters to lose this seat. A few thousand ballots that run out of the right names will do the trick.
Alaska has its own funny history with voter intent, too. In 2010, Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary and won her seat back as a write-in. Election workers counted ballots that butchered the spelling of her name, so long as they could tell whom the voter wanted, and the Alaska Supreme Court signed off on it.
Back then, reading a voter’s mind passed for good government. Somehow it only sounds sinister when the candidate who needs it is a Trump ally.
The Critics Say He Can’t Do It, and Skip the Inconvenient Part
Election law experts lined up to trash the suit. Justin Levitt, a Justice Department official in the Obama administration, told NBC News that no law lets the department challenge ballots or hold up certification. Another election law professor told Newsweek the case is “completely meritless” and predicted a judge would toss it fast.
The administration leans on the National Voter Registration Act, which Congress passed in 1993. Whether a federal judge buys that reading is a genuinely open question, and the critics may well win the courtroom round.
But the critics leave out the awkward fact at the center of this whole fight. Trump didn’t invent the idea that this candidacy smelled wrong. Alaska’s own elections director put that conclusion in writing months before any federal lawyer touched the case.
And the ballot itself carries a second fight. Alaskans will also vote on Ballot Measure 2, which would scrap ranked-choice voting and open primaries and bring back party primaries. A nearly identical repeal fell short in 2024 by just 737 votes out of almost 321,000 cast.
Trump weighed in on that one in April 2026, urging Alaskans to ditch what he called their “disastrous, and very fraudulent” ranked-choice system.
So the Senate seat and the voting system that decides it share the same sheet of paper. If a ballot twin ends up deciding the race, the repeal campaign won’t need to buy another commercial.
In August 2022, more than 11,000 ballots that started with a Republican stopped counting before the final round. Mary Peltola won that race by about 5,200 votes.
Sources: Mediaite; CBS News; NBC News; CNBC; CNN; The Hill; Newsweek; The Daily Signal; Associated Press via ABC News; Ballotpedia; Alaska Beacon; Alaska Public Media; Anchorage Daily News; Alaska’s News Source; Alaska Division of Elections results via RCVis