The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday filed a lawsuit that intends to weigh in on the results of the Senate race in Alaska. It seeks to block certification of the election results under certain conditions if Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses.
Experts question whether it has the legal basis to do so—and if this intervention is a preview of how the Trump Administration might respond to unfavorable midterm results across the U.S.
The DOJ, in its filing, expressed concern that there might be “voter confusion” stemming from the fact that two candidates on the ballot are named Dan Sullivan. Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is currently seeking re-election, and one of his challengers is Daniel J. Sullivan.
The GOP raised concerns about the similar-seeming names when Sullivan filed to run in May, and a solution was proposed to add the word “incumbent” beside the current senator’s name. But they continued to express concerns that voters will split their votes between the two men, potentially opening the door for Democrat Mary Peltola to win the seat.
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Alaska has traditionally been a state that leans Republican: Trump won the state by 13 points in 2024, and the state has not had a Democratic governor since 2002.
But the race is closer than analysts first expected. October polls from The New York Times/Siena, Alaska Survey Research, and Data for Progress show Peltola leading Dan S. Sullivan by between 2 and 7 points.
The DOJ lawsuit claims that the “sole purpose” of Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy is to benefit Peltola. Therefore, it seeks to block certification if the incumbent loses but would have won with all of Daniel J. Sullivan’s votes. To determine that, it proposes recalculating the ranked-choice count as though those votes had gone to the incumbent instead.
In a Wednesday Truth Social post, Trump said he was “very concerned” about the race and described the situation as “totally confusing.”
“Even 1, 2, or 3% could make the difference,” he wrote of the potential outcomes.
The DOJ said there would need to be an “investigation” to determine which vote was meant for which Sullivan. There is no indication of how they might distinguish voter intent. Neither the DOJ nor the candidates’ campaigns responded to TIME’s requests for comment.
On Friday, Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked to join the DOJ’s case as defendants, writing: “Alaskans, apparently, must elect Senator Dan S. Sullivan or the President will not let them elect anyone at all.”
Voting rights experts are calling it a “garbage lawsuit” and “an unprecedented intervention by the federal government.”
Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s other senator and also a Republican, endorsed the incumbent Sullivan in January but on Friday condemned the DOJ’s efforts to intervene.
“Alaskans don’t need any help voting for their preferred candidates,” she wrote in a post on X. “The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit.”
Asked to comment on the DOJ filing Friday, Trump told reporters: "I'm the one that said do it."
Why experts question the DOJ’s Alaska election lawsuit
Prior to the DOJ lawsuit, Republicans sought to remove Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot in June.
When he decided to run, Republicans sent complaints to Carol Beecher, the director of Alaska’s Division of Elections. She wrote a letter to Sullivan in June saying that election officials had determined that he would be removed, claiming his candidacy was not filed “in good faith for the purpose of genuinely pursuing” leadership.
Sullivan challenged the decision and sued the state. Judge Thomas Matthews of Alaska’s Third District Superior Court ruled in June that he could remain on the ballot beside the other candidates. He wrote in a 32-page decision that elections officials were introducing a “new, previously unstated ‘good faith’ criteria” and said that this requirement is not present in state law or the Constitution.
That decision was upheld by the Alaska Supreme Court on June 29.
It was later determined that a “mitigating remedy” would be to present each candidate’s name with the middle initial and to add “incumbent” to the sitting senator’s name.
The Alaska Supreme Court ruling did not end scrutiny of Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy. In August, Reuters reported that the DOJ had issued grand jury subpoenas while investigating whether he entered the race to confuse voters.
The DOJ then filed its new lawsuit amid October polling that showed Peltola ahead.
The department justifies the move using language in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) that says its purpose is to “protect the integrity of the electoral process.”
Experts, however, dispute whether that language authorizes the intervention.
Derek Muller, a professor of election law at the University of Notre Dame, wrote in a blog post after the filing that the proposed investigation is “essentially impossible.” But succeeding is not the point, he continues.
“The legal claim is so absurdly thin, there’s essentially no likelihood of success,” he wrote, adding that the real purpose of litigation is to signal to the press and public that the Trump Administration is “ready” if the result goes against the GOP’s interests in Alaska.
The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), a nonpartisan nonprofit working to inform voters, called the move “unprecedented” in a statement that also said the lawsuit “raises serious concerns about political interference.”
“I cannot recall an administration ever attempting to stop the certification of an election—and certainly not 11 days before polls close,” CEIR Executive Director David Becker said in the statement.
“Furthermore, this issue has already been fully litigated by Alaska’s courts,” he continued. “Alaska election officials are following state law, as the Constitution requires, and the courts will uphold that.”
Richard Hasen, a professor of law at UCLA, called the move a “desperate and unprofessional assault” on the American elections system.
Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization represented by the ACLU, filed a motion on Friday seeking to join the case to oppose the DOJ’s effort. Its president and CEO, Virginia Kase Solomon, said in a statement Saturday: “Politicians don’t dictate election outcomes; the people do.”
Nate Adams, a spokesperson for Dan S. Sullivan’s campaign, expressed confidence in his candidate’s re-election but told local media outlet KFSK on Friday: “We’ll let the DOJ complaint run its course.”
How has the federal government used the National Voter Registration Act?
The National Voter Registration Act was enacted in 1993 to address barriers to voter registration that depressed participation and disproportionately affected racial minorities. It was predicated upon the fundamental right of every eligible citizen to vote, as well as the duty of local and federal governments to protect that participation in the democratic process.
In the past 30-plus years, it has been used to sue states that fail to maintain their voter rolls or enforce registration requirements.
The Biden Administration also reckoned with Alaska in 2022, finding that the state wasn’t consistently letting residents register to vote—or update their voter registration—as part of their routine paperwork at the Department of Motor Vehicles. An agreement reached that June required Alaska to bring those procedures into compliance with the NVRA.
In 2012, the Obama Administration sued the state of Florida over a program intended to identify and remove suspected noncitizens from its voter-registration rolls too close to the elections. The parties agreed to dismiss the case in January 2013.
The George W. Bush Administration also sued several states under the NVRA to enforce requirements for offering voter registration and maintaining accurate voter rolls.
The DOJ’s Alaska lawsuit goes further than those earlier cases. Experts say the NVRA does not expressly authorize blocking election certification over suspected voter confusion.
If courts accept the DOJ’s argument, the consequences could extend beyond Alaska, warns Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. It could give the federal government a new basis to challenge how states design ballots, determine which candidates qualify, and certify election results—all in the name of protecting election integrity.
“[The lawsuit] attempts to stretch a federal statute, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), beyond recognition by snipping language from the law’s preamble and treating it as if it creates vast and open-ended new duties that the federal government can enforce on states,” Olson said in a statement Friday. “If accepted, it would suddenly federalize many issues of local election administration.”