Notre Dame Law School election law professor Derek Muller, writing at Election Law Blog, tells us why the Department of "Justice's" scheme to block the Alaska Senate election result certification if Democrat Mary Peltola wins won't work :
The Department of Justice has filed United States v. Alaska in federal court. The gist of the case is this: there’s a risk of voter confusion from having two Dan Sullivans on the ballot, and the State of Alaska should not be permitted to certify its results “pending an investigation” to determine whether any votes cast for the one Sullivan were meant for another.
The case isn’t yet ripe, obviously, but the Department is pre-suing both to signal to the public that it’s “doing something” and that it’s ready if the result goes against the GOP in the state. And of course it probably would have helped Alaska if the Department thought about weighing in months and months ago, when there was feasibility in assisting with respect to the remedy.
Such factual investigation is essentially impossible (the best evidence that voters preferred one Sullivan over another is how they marked their ballots) and a reason why parties bring ballot access cases before the ballots are printed rather than after, so such a factual caveat is largely meaningless.
But setting aside the factual issue, the legal argument is one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen. It cites the preamble to the National Voter Registration Act–its “findings and purposes”–as the source of law for the claim. That part reads, “The purposes of this chapter are . . . to protect the integrity of the electoral process.” 52 U.S.C. § 20501(b)(3).
The Department excised the “The purposes of this chapter are” language throughout its complaint and replaced it with something not in the statute. For instance, it claims that certifying the result “would violate Defendants’ duties under the NVRA to ‘protect
the integrity of the electoral process.'” That is certainly not what the NVRA does. This language places no “duties” on a state outside of those enumerated in the chapter. And, of course, the Department cannot find any ballot access rules in the chapter.I also cannot imagine anything some election litigators in the Republican Party might want less than to open this language of the NVRA to freewheeling litigation around the United States in future elections.
Some, in a panic, might react that the Department is trying to deny certification of an election in a state. Of course that’s what the Department is trying to do. But the legal claim is so absurdly thin, there’s essentially no likelihood of success. (I write essentially because, of course, one never knows how one judge or two judges on a panel might react, but I think the Supreme Court will have nothing for this claim.)
In short, like many Department letters over the last few years, it is designed to win the press release rather than the litigation. This one simply takes the form of a complaint... (our emphasis)
The best way to forestall these kinds of risible, un-Constitutional power grabs is for voters to overwhelmingly vote for Democrats -- in Alaska and every other State on every ballot line. Trying to pull off a coup when you're losing by big margins everywhere in the country isn't something that would seem destined for success, especially with these low-voltage clowns running the show.
BONUS:
This dumb hack has no power to do that. States don't have to listen to anything he says.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) October 22, 2026 at 4:54 PM
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BONUS II: A pic of Alaska's ballot, showing Sen. Sullivan identified as "incumbent" (4th line):
(Photo: Consigliere Blanche with Trump Crime Family boss at trial for covering up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, 4/16/24 / Mark Peterson, Pool, AFP via Getty Images)
