Trump sues Alaska to stop certification and spends legitimacy

By Adele Rutherford · Reporting from Atlanta · October 24, 2026

When Donald Trump orders the Justice Department to halt election certification in Alaska, he uses federal power to overturn state procedure and spends institutional legitimacy to cover an electoral panic.

The process before the preference

When the executive branch of the United States government decides to sue a sovereign state over how it prints its own ballots, the first question for any lawyer is where the statute is. Procedure is where power actually lives. A rule that only works while your people hold power was never a rule. According to AP News and CNBC, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court in Alaska on Thursday, October 23, 2026. The filing demands that the state be blocked from certifying a win for Democratic candidate Mary Peltola if Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, or if second candidate Daniel J. Sullivan remains on the ballot. President Donald Trump made his authorship plain on Friday, telling reporters, "I’m the one that said do it."

The lawsuit names the State of Alaska, Alaska Elections Division Director Carol Beecher, the state's election boards, and the state Ballot Counting Review Board as defendants. Associate U.S. Attorney General Stanley Woodward signed the filing. The complaint asks a federal judge to bar the state from certifying any result impacted by voter confusion. It requests an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan. Attorney General Todd Blanche stated prior to the filing that the DOJ had no plans to improperly interfere with elections, but the text of the complaint tells a different story.

The National Voter Registration Act enacted by Congress is cited by the Justice Department to justify the intervention. A spokesperson claimed the agency is taking necessary steps to ensure that this frivolous candidacy does not undermine the integrity of Alaska's election or the will of its voters. But the Alaska Supreme Court previously upheld the decision to add Daniel J. Sullivan to the ballot after he challenged the Division of Elections. In the August primary, Sen. Dan Sullivan received more than 68,000 votes, while the challenging Daniel J. Sullivan received about 2% of the total vote. FiftyPlusOne polling shows Mary Peltola leading the contest.

The mechanism of contested certification

To understand the machinery at work here, one must look to the 1876 United States presidential election. In that contest, presidential elections were held on November 7, 1876. A razor-thin outcome between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden required extraordinary legal and political mechanisms to resolve. The shared mechanism between that historical crisis and the Anchorage filing is the use of legal and political challenges to contest the certification of a narrow election result to prevent a candidate from taking office.

In Alaska, the state Senate race uses ranked-choice voting. On the general election ballot, Sen. Dan Sullivan is listed as Dan S. Sullivan with the designations registered Republican and incumbent. Gerald Heikes is listed as a registered Republican. Daniel J. Sullivan is listed as Daniel J. Sullivan without a party designation. Daniel J. Sullivan is a retired teacher from Petersburg, Alaska, who registered as a Republican in 2026 and was previously a member of the Alaska Independence Party. He filed to run on May 29, stating in a June social media post that he entered the race because he was unhappy with the 12-year record of the current senator.

As reported by France 24 and AP News, legal scholars have not minced words about the federal government's novel theory. Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller wrote that the statute simply doesn't let the Department of Justice enjoin certification. Muller noted that the lawsuit would likely only kick in if Republicans narrowly lose the Alaska Senate race. He added that the filing probably would not survive long, and could well be mooted by a wide Democratic victory or a narrow Republican one. David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research stated that the Trump administration has absolutely no authority to tell Alaska when or how to certify the results of its Senate election and that this issue has already been fully litigated by Alaska's courts.

The price of spending legitimacy

Today, Republicans currently hold narrow control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress. President Trump's approval rating has reached a record low attributed to rising diesel and gasoline prices during the Iran war. The administration reaches for federal levers to preempt a hostile electorate.

Local leaders have rejected the federal intrusion outright. Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski wrote that Alaskans don't need any help voting for their preferred candidates. The State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year's ballot. Murkowski concluded that the Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit. Mary Peltola called the action "just flagrant, flagrant corruption in my opinion." Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee executive director Devan Barber stated that Donald Trump knows that Dan Sullivan is going to lose the election, so now his Department of Justice is filing a sham lawsuit to overturn the will of Alaska voters and steal an election when he loses.

The danger of this litigation is not that it will succeed in federal court. Basic doctrines of standing and federalism will likely make short work of it. The danger is the capital stock of institutional legitimacy, which spends fast and refills slowly. When an administration treats the Justice Department as a campaign litigation arm, it trains the opposing party to do precisely the same thing the moment the wheel turns. Courts are places we ought to be able to lose in and still respect. That respect requires referees who do not write their briefs from the Oval Office.

Legitimacy is an exhaustible resource, and this lawsuit spends it to cover an electoral panic.

Trump sues Alaska to stop certification and spends legitimacy

The process before the preference

The mechanism of contested certification

The price of spending legitimacy

Sources