Trump uses Justice Department to undermine Alaska election law

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

President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to sue to block Alaska's Senate certification over candidate name confusion, a move that weaponizes federal power to override state court rulings.

The Department of Justice has ceased to function as a law enforcement agency and has instead become a political instrument. By filing a lawsuit to potentially block the certification of Alaska's Senate election, the department is not protecting the vote. It is attempting to manufacture a result. Certification is the formal process by which election officials verify that the vote count is accurate and official. To threaten this process before a single ballot is cast is a frontal assault on the stability of our republic. The Justice Department is wrong because it seeks to use federal power to override a state supreme court and disenfranchise voters based on a speculative "doomsday scenario."

A pretext of confusion

The federal government's case rests on the existence of two candidates named Dan Sullivan. Senator Dan S. Sullivan is the Republican incumbent. Daniel J. Sullivan is a retired teacher and former US Forest Service worker. According to the BBC, the state of Alaska uses a ranked-choice voting system. The Alaska Supreme Court already ruled in June that both men remain on the ballot. The court directed election officials to distinguish the two. The ballot identifies the incumbent as such in parentheses.

The Justice Department claims that Daniel J. Sullivan is running to mislead voters and benefit the Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. argued that the inclusion of the second Sullivan will "distort the will of Alaskan voters." He asserts that certification would reflect a process that "lacked integrity." This is a lawyer's way of saying the result might be inconvenient.

The record does not support this panic. Emily L. Waters, a professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, told Global News that she sees no possibility of any literate voter being unable to distinguish the two candidates. A state judge previously ruled that a candidate's motivations are irrelevant if they follow procedure. This is the core of the process. Whether a candidate runs to harass or distract does not matter if the rules are met. The Justice Department is attempting to replace the rule of law with a test of "good faith" that the executive branch gets to define.

The reach of the NVRA

To find a legal hook, the Justice Department cited the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA. The NVRA is a federal law designed to make it easier for citizens to register to vote. As CNBC reports, the department is relying on the general preamble of the act to justify its intervention. This is a desperate stretch of the law. The NVRA contains no provision that allows the federal government to dictate who is eligible for a state ballot or how that ballot is laid out.

The lawsuit asks a judge to bar Alaska from certifying results if Senator Sullivan loses by a margin smaller than the votes received by Daniel J. Sullivan. If this happens, the government wants an investigation into "voter intent." This is where the process becomes a weapon. The Justice Department has offered no mechanism to determine which voters meant to vote for which Sullivan. They are asking the court to accept a void of evidence and fill it with executive preference.

The Democratic Party’s Senate campaign committee and the League of Women Voters of Alaska are now seeking to join the suit as defendant-intervenors. They argue that the federal executive branch lacks the authority to intervene in state-run elections. They are correct. When the federal government attempts to police the "integrity" of a state ballot through a preemptive suit, it creates the very confusion it claims to prevent.

The machinery of the executive

This is not an isolated legal theory. It is a pattern of behavior. President Donald Trump told reporters, "I'm the one that said 'do it.'" He called the second Sullivan's candidacy a "scam" and "the fake." This is the language of a client, not a chief executive. Jonathan Capehart noted on PBS that the president has turned the Department of Justice into his own personal law firm.

This is the same mechanism we saw in the 2020 United States presidential election. In both cases, the executive attempted to use federal legal machinery to block or overturn the certification of a state-run election result. The goal is not to correct an error but to prevent a loss.

The ghost of Bush v. Gore lingers here, though that case dealt with the methodology of counting rather than the identity of the candidates. In that instance, the court intervened to stop a recount. Here, the executive is asking the court to stop a certification. The difference is that the 2000 dispute happened after the votes were cast. This suit is a preemptive strike. It is an attempt to tell the voters of Alaska that their choice may be subject to a federal veto.

Attorney General Todd Blanche claims the department does not intend to improperly interfere with elections. He calls the possibility of confusion a "doomsday scenario." The problem is that the department is the one creating the scenario. By suing to block certification, the government is telling the public that the election is not fair before it has even begun. This is how legitimacy is spent.

The federal district court in Alaska should dismiss this lawsuit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The National Voter Registration Act does not grant the executive branch the power to police state ballot layouts. The court must hold that the authority to manage elections rests with the state, as established in the long record of American federalism. If the court accepts this broad interpretation of the NVRA, it hands every future president a tool to invalidate any state result they dislike. The most likely outcome is that Senator Sullivan wins by a margin that makes this litigation moot. But the damage to the process is already done. The Justice Department has traded its independence for a gambit, and in doing so, it has undermined the very integrity it claims to defend.

Trump uses Justice Department to undermine Alaska election law

A pretext of confusion

The reach of the NVRA

The machinery of the executive

Sources