The Trump administration filed suit 11 days before the election, arguing that a second candidate named Dan Sullivan could confuse voters into handing the seat to Democrat Mary Peltola.

The Justice Department has sued the State of Alaska to stop it from certifying the result of its U.S. Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan loses — a suit filed 11 days before the election and confirmed on Friday as the president's own initiative.

"I'm the one that said do it," President Donald Trump told reporters as he arrived for a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Florida, according to the Associated Press.

The complaint, filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, names the state, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, the state's election boards and its State Ballot Counting Review Board. It asks Judge Sharon L. Gleason to bar certification of any result "that may be impacted by voter confusion" pending an investigation.

What the government alleges

At issue is the presence on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan, a former teacher and fishing enthusiast from Petersburg who filed to run as a Republican but appears without a party designation. Senator Sullivan is listed as the Republican incumbent.

The complaint asserts that Daniel J. Sullivan entered the race "with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him" and that the "sole purpose of his candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign." Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward wrote that the second Sullivan's presence "threatens to mislead Alaskan citizens who want to vote for Senator Sullivan."

Daniel J. Sullivan has rejected that characterization. "It's a free country," he told Courthouse News in August, describing his candidacy as a response to disappointment with the incumbent's representation.

In the August nonpartisan primary, Senator Sullivan received more than 68,000 votes and Daniel J. Sullivan about 4,100, roughly 2% of the total. Mary Peltola, the former congresswoman and Democratic nominee, was the top vote-getter. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting in the general election, and voters may rank both Sullivans.

A thin legal footing, scholars say

The legal theory rests on a single line in the National Voter Registration Act, whose findings and purposes include "protect[ing] the integrity of the electoral process" — 52 U.S.C. § 20501(b)(3). The complaint repeatedly recasts that stated purpose as a binding duty on state officials.

Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who writes on election law, called the argument "one of the worst I've ever seen" and "absurdly thin," noting the NVRA places no such duties on states and contains no ballot-access rules. He also observed that the factual investigation the government demands is effectively impossible, since the best evidence of voter intent is the ballot itself. He characterized the filing as designed "to win the press release rather than the litigation."

Gloobeam could not independently verify the suit's prospects; no hearing schedule had been posted as of Saturday.

Not the first attempt

Alaska's Supreme Court earlier this year rejected a Republican-backed effort to remove Daniel J. Sullivan from the primary ballot, and state elections officials — Republicans themselves — set the ballot design that distinguishes the two candidates. Richard H. Pildes and other election-law commentators have warned that a post-election factual inquiry into voter confusion has no established precedent.

The suit follows months of signals that the administration was preparing to litigate state-run elections. Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC News a day earlier that it was "never our intention to improperly interfere with elections." Neither the White House nor the Justice Department responded to questions Friday about that statement's compatibility with the Alaska filing.

Reaction

Senator Sullivan's campaign declined to say whether he supports the intervention. "We'll let the DOJ complaint run its course," spokesman Nate Adams said. "Alaskans can tell the difference between a Democrat sideshow and Senator Sullivan's strong record of delivering for Alaska."

Peltola, writing on Substack, called it "a blatant, despicable political threat — all because a historically unpopular 12-year incumbent is scared that he's going to lose the Senate seat that belongs to Alaskans." Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee executive director Devan Barber accused the administration of filing "a sham lawsuit to overturn the will of Alaska voters."

Alaska has about 738,000 residents, and both parties expect a narrow margin on Nov. 3. The case is United States v. State of Alaska, No. 3:26-cv-00376 (D. Alaska).