DOJ Sues to Delay Alaska Senate Result in Two-Sullivan Ballot Fight

What happened

The US Justice Department has sued Alaska in federal court, asking that the state be barred from certifying its Senate election result if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses by a smaller margin than the votes won by another man on the ballot who is also named Dan Sullivan.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, argues that the second Sullivan, Daniel J Sullivan Jr, a retired elementary schoolteacher from Petersburg in southeastern Alaska, could confuse voters. The department wants certification held up while officials investigate whether voters mistakenly backed the wrong Sullivan.

Alaska's Supreme Court already settled this question once. Election officials first disqualified Daniel Sullivan Jr, but the courts overturned that decision, and in June the state's highest court ruled he could stay on the ballot.

The ballot itself draws a clear line between the two men. The incumbent appears as "Sullivan, Dan S (Registered Republican) Incumbent." The challenger appears as "Sullivan, Daniel J Jr" with no party designation, even though he has registered as a Republican. He has denied accusations from Republicans that he entered the race to confuse voters.

Why it matters

The race is far closer than Alaska usually produces. The state has long voted Republican in presidential elections, and President Donald Trump won it by roughly 13 percentage points in 2024. But in August's primary, Democrat Mary Peltola took 49.5 percent of the vote to about 41 percent for Senator Sullivan. Two other candidates advanced to the November 3 election: Daniel J Sullivan Jr and Gerald Heikes.

Sullivan is seeking a third six-year term. He was first elected to the Senate in 2014 and re-elected in 2020, after serving as Alaska's attorney general and commissioner of natural resources. Peltola, a former congresswoman, became the first Alaska Native elected to the US House in 2022.

The stakes run beyond one seat. Republicans now hold 53 of the Senate's 100 seats, while Democrats and two independents who caucus with them hold 47. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to reach 51 and a majority, and a 50-50 split would let Vice President JD Vance cast tie-breaking votes. That is why [Ohio's rural voters](/article/ohio-rural-voters-decide-senate-control) and races like this one are drawing national attention, and why our [US midterm elections explainer](/article/us-midterm-elections-2026-explained) tracks which seats could flip control.

Alaska's voting system complicates the Justice Department's argument. Unlike most states, Alaska sends the top four primary finishers to the general election regardless of party, and voters rank candidates in order of preference. If nobody wins more than 50 percent of first-choice votes, the lowest finisher is eliminated and those votes transfer to the next-ranked candidate still in the race, until two remain and the one with the most votes wins.

Glenn Wright, a political science professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, told Al Jazeera the system is built for exactly this problem. "The ballots are super, super, super clear about who the incumbent Dan Sullivan is," he said, and a voter who picks the wrong Sullivan but ranks the incumbent second could still see that vote transfer. The catch: voters are not required to rank every candidate, so some votes may not transfer at all.

Forrest Nabors, chairman of the political science department at the University of Alaska Anchorage, said the similar names could still decide a tight race. "It could swing the election if the election is close and the margin of voters who intend to re-elect the senator are confused and accidentally vote for the other candidate named Sullivan," he told Al Jazeera.

What it means for the US

This is the first time the federal government has tried to hold up certification of a Senate result over a same-name candidate, and election lawyers are watching it as a possible template. The lawsuit has raised questions about whether the administration could challenge certification in other states where Republicans lose, and it lands as the Justice Department faces criticism over investigations and prosecutions involving Democratic opponents of Trump. Federal agents recently searched the home of Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar as part of an immigration fraud investigation. Omar has described that action as politically motivated.

Trump has acknowledged directing the Justice Department to file the Alaska lawsuit, while his administration says the action is intended to prevent voter confusion. For American voters, the case tests a basic boundary: who decides an election result, the state that ran it or a federal court acting days before voting ends. If a court accepts the department's theory, losing candidates in other states could ask for the same treatment. If it rejects it, the episode still leaves a mark, since Nabors noted the case alone raises voter awareness of the two Sullivans, which could limit mistaken votes.

The fight also shows how tight the national mood has become. Wright said the fact that the Alaska race is competitive at all in a traditionally Republican state reflects wider dissatisfaction with the Trump administration, a theme running through [the cost-of-living strain hitting US workers ahead of the midterms](/article/cost-of-living-strain-us-workers-midterm-elections).

What happens next

No federal court has ordered Alaska to suspend certification. The Justice Department may ask a court to intervene, but it cannot block certification on its own, and the lawsuit seeks a delay only if the incumbent loses and the other Sullivan's votes could have changed the outcome.

Legal experts are skeptical of the case. Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote on the Election Law blog that the best evidence of voter preference is how voters marked their ballots, and called the department's argument "so absurdly thin" that there is "essentially no likelihood of success." He also questioned why the department waited until days before the election to act when the dispute over the two candidates had been known for months.

Nabors called the intervention "unusual" but said federal action could be justified when an election is administered unfairly. Whether the case is decided before election day or not, Alaska votes on November 3, and the certification question will follow the count.