The Trump administration wants to block the certification of the Senate election in Alaska if Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses, arguing that another candidate with the same name may confuse voters.
The justice department said in a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday that the inclusion of another Dan Sullivan on the ballot could lead some to mistakenly cast their votes for the wrong candidate.
Polls suggest the race between Senator Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola is tight, with Peltola holding a narrow lead in the final days before the 3 November vote.
The US government wants the judge to bar the state from certifying the results if Senator Sullivan loses by a margin less than the other Sullivan.
“I’m the one that said do it,” US President Donald Trump told reporters when asked for his thoughts on the lawsuit after he landed in Florida for a campaign rally on Friday.
Trump has referred to the second Sullivan’s candidacy as a “scam” and said his administration was looking at “powerful legal options” to end it. The retired teacher previously denied his candidacy had an ulterior motive.
Previous efforts to remove that Sullivan, a retired teacher, from the ballot have already been rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court.
For the 3 November midterm election, the senator will be listed on the ballot as the Republican incumbent.
Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system means that voters could select both Sullivans if they are unsure at the ballot box.
In court documents, the justice department said Alaska “will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its elections” if it includes “any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J Sullivan”.
The second Sullivan, who was also a US Forest Service worker, was reportedly once a member of the Alaska Independence Party before registering as a Republican earlier this year.
In the filing, Associate Attorney General Stanley E Woodward Jr asserted that the sole purpose of his 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.
Dan J Sullivan has repeatedly denied 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.
He said separately to Courthouse News that 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”.
In the event Peltola wins, and the margin of loss suggests possible confusion, the lawsuit calls for certification to be delayed pending an investigation into whether voters were mixed up on the names as well as 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 – which Trump won by 14 percentage points in 2024 – is among the most closely watched in the upcoming midterm elections.
The president’s approval ratings in the state have been badly hit by voter disapproval of rising prices and the war in Iran.
