The Trump administration has asked a federal court to block certification of Alaska’s US Senate election if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses, arguing that a second candidate with a nearly identical name could confuse voters in a closely watched contest that may help determine control of the Senate.
The lawsuit, filed by the US Justice Department in Alaska on Thursday, seeks to prevent officials from certifying a result if the incumbent might have won had votes intended for him not gone to the other candidate, Daniel J Sullivan.
President Donald Trump confirmed on Friday that he had personally ordered the legal action.
“I’m the one that said ‘do it,’” Trump told reporters in Florida, acknowledging his direct involvement in the Justice Department’s challenge.
The case raises questions about federal authority over state-run elections, the practical difficulties of proving voter confusion and whether the court can intervene in the way the administration wants.
Why is Trump challenging Alaska’s Senate election?
The Senate contest has become a closely watched race as Democrats seek to gain control of the chamber. They need to win four additional seats, and Alaska is among the Republican-held states they hope to flip.
Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan faces Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, alongside Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired elementary-school teacher from Petersburg, Alaska.
The two Sullivans have become a source of controversy, with Republicans arguing that the challenger’s name could divert votes from the incumbent.
Daniel J. Sullivan is registered as a Republican, but election officials list him on the ballot without a party affiliation. The incumbent is identified as “Registered Republican” and “incumbent”.
The challenger has denied trying to mislead voters.
“My intention is not to trick people,” he said in an interview in August. “I would hope people are informed enough to know the difference between an incumbent senator and a teacher.”
What does the Justice Department want the court to do?
The Justice Department argues that the presence of the second Sullivan could undermine the election’s fairness if voters mistakenly select the wrong candidate.
It is asking the court to declare unlawful the certification of a result affected by such confusion and to delay certification while officials investigate whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were intended for the senator.
The department has cited the National Voter Registration Act, arguing that the integrity of the electoral process gives the federal government grounds to intervene.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the legal action was necessary to protect the election’s integrity.
However, election law experts have questioned the legal basis for the request. Derek Muller, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, described the department’s interpretation of the law as unusual and expressed doubt that a court would accept it.
Vanita Gupta, a former associate US attorney general, called the lawsuit “meritless”, arguing that election administration and certification fall within Alaska’s authority.
Could ranked-choice voting prevent confusion?
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, under which voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those votes are redistributed according to voters’ next preferences. The process continues until a winner emerges.
This system could reduce the impact of confusion between the two Sullivans. Voters who support the incumbent could rank both candidates, placing the senator first and the challenger second, or vice versa.
If the challenger is eliminated, votes could transfer according to the rankings voters supplied.
The Justice Department argues, however, that voters might rank the wrong Sullivan or fail to rank the incumbent, potentially benefiting Peltola.
Muller said determining whether voters had made such mistakes after ballots were cast would be difficult because votes are secret.
“This is just the stuff that is just impossible to measure after the fact,” he said.
What happens next in the Alaska Senate lawsuit?
The Alaska Supreme Court ruled in June that Daniel J Sullivan could remain on the ballot after state election officials had removed him.
The federal lawsuit has been assigned to Judge Sharon L. Gleason, appointed by former President Barack Obama. The administration had not made an emergency request for immediate action at the time of the report.
Alaska election officials expect ranked-choice tabulation to begin on November 18, after the deadline for overseas ballots to arrive.
About the Author
Sayantani Biswas
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br> She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br> Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br> Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.