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 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.
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.
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.
“Even 1, 2, or 3% could make the difference,” he wrote of the potential outcomes.
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.”
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.
Asked to comment on the DOJ filing Friday, Trump told reporters: "I'm the one that said do it."
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.
That decision was upheld by the Alaska Supreme Court on June 29.
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 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.”
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 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.”
“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.”
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.”
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.
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.
The George W. Bush Administration also sued several states under the NVRA to enforce requirements for offering voter registration and maintaining accurate voter rolls.
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.”
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