A BALLOT THAT LITERALLY SAYS “INCUMBENT,” ALASKA (The Daily Whatever Press)—Donald Trump’s Justice Department has filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to freeze Alaska’s U.S. Senate results if Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, on the theory that the voters of the 49th state are too fucking stupid to tell their own senator apart from a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg.
The suit, filed late Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, names the state and Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher. It asks the court to block certification if the incumbent, Republican Dan S. Sullivan, loses by fewer votes than Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. receives, and then to investigate whether every single person who voted for Dan J. actually meant to. The complaint never explains how anyone audits the private intentions behind a secret ballot, because nobody can.
On the November ballot, the incumbent Republican senator’s name sits next to the words “incumbent” and “registered Republican.” FIE! The trickery! Saying it right out loud next to the guys name! What witchcraft is this!?
The other guy gets neither. Dan J. won 2.5% of the August primary vote. In the latest InsiderAdvantage poll, he’s at 1.7%. I’m not a stats wizard, but thinks are not looking good for non-incumbent Danny J. Sullivan, Jr.
But as every good GenXer knows—there can be only one!
In 1986, Highlander taught a generation of latchkey kids that when immortals meet, there can be only one. Forty years later, the Trump DOJ has adapted it for the Alaska Senate race, minus the swords, the Queen soundtrack, and any discernible law. John Smiths and Bob Browns everywhere, your time is coming…
Dan J. is a retired teacher from Petersburg, a fishing town in Southeast Alaska. Republicans have called him a Democratic plant from day one. The Division of Elections tried to boot him in June, with Beecher writing that he “filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead” voters, and on June 29 the Alaska Supreme Court put him right back on the ballot. Peltola’s campaign and the state Democratic Party say they had nothing to do with him. NBC reported in August that federal prosecutors had issued grand jury subpoenas anyway.
Maybe he’s a sincere crank. Maybe he’s a plant. Maybe his parents were time travelers from the future, sent here to name him this for this exact reason! The highest court in Alaska says he gets to run either way, and that is how ballots work, in this here system of government where states control every aspect of elections.
He told the New York Times, “I’m just a guy, and they’re scary.” Before that, the sadder version: “It’s all because of my name, and you know, there’s nothing I can do about my name.” I don’t know, Danny. Kaitlin Jenner felt that way once, and now look at her!
And because this race was clearly written in a writers’ room, there’s a third one. Former Anchorage Mayor Dan A. Sullivan posted, “As the OG Dan Sullivan, I urge Alaskans to vote for Senator Daniel S. Sullivan.” Sullivan, Sullivan, Sullivan. It’s Being John Malkovich with more fleece.
If a second Lawrence Winnerman ever runs for anything in Indiana, I will not be asking the federal government to interrogate his voters. I will be buying him a drink and asking how the hell that happened. Actually, in my case, there is literally ONLY ONE other Lawrence Winnerman in the world, and he’s some rich, old Republican. If we ever met it would cause a rupture in the fabric of spacetime.
Of all the laws on the books
The federal hook here is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the motor voter law, the one Bill Clinton signed after Rock the Vote spent years nagging us between music videos to get registered. It’s the reason you could register at the DMV. The DOJ isn’t citing any part of it that requires anything. It’s citing the preamble, the throat-clearing at the top, where Congress said states should “protect the integrity of the electoral process.”
That is the entire legal theory. A mission statement.
Derek Muller, an election-law professor at Notre Dame, called it one of the worst arguments he has seen, and noted that one paragraph is missing the verb that would ask the court to actually do something. Libby Bakalar, a former state elections attorney, called it “laughably bad.”
The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to overturn a Senate election that hasn’t happened yet, and it forgot a VERB. Somebody get these people a VHS of Schoolhouse Rock. “Verb: That’s What’s Happening” is three minutes long. They have time.
The man who said “do it”
This was no rogue prosecutor freelancing in Anchorage. In Florida, Trump bragged, “I’m the one that said, ‘do it.’” Hours before the filing, Attorney General Todd Blanche said it was not the department’s intention to “improperly interfere with elections,” then refused to rule out a “doomsday” scenario. The man who signed the complaint, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, used to defend people prosecuted for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
cough Asshole! cough
So: the president ordered it, the attorney general hedged it, and a January 6 defense lawyer signed it. In 2020, career attorneys at the same department refused to help Trump overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Most of them are gone now. This is what the building looks like after you fire everyone who said no.
Sen. Sullivan’s campaign says it will let the complaint “run its course,” and someone close to him says he didn’t ask for it and was surprised. Pssst, Senator. Surprised is not a position. Call the president and tell him to drop it, or own it.
The Ohio exception
The same month Trump decided spoiler candidates are an existential threat to democracy, a brand-new outfit called Enough Promises Ohio PAC paid more than $397,000 for mailers urging Ohioans to “Join the Revolution” and “Send a Worker to the Senate.” The mailers boost Greg Levy, a self-described socialist, against Sherrod Brown, who is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Jon Husted. (Yes, that Jon Husted. I already spent one column this month on his ass, and I’m not going back. I mean, I did look at his ass, and you know, it’s fine and all, but a guy has got to have standards.)
The vendor on those mailers shares a South Carolina business suite with a direct-mail shop run by Big Dog Strategies, which advises Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC and ran Bernie Moreno’s 2024 campaign against Brown. Levy, the actual socialist, called it “dirty tricks.”
So in Ohio, a spoiler is a mail program. In Alaska, it’s a federal crime scene. The only principle in play is whose senator is losing, don’t you think? It’s just another case of It’s OK If You’re A Republican (or IOKIYAR. Eee-OKE-ee-yaaaarrrrr.)
Peltola’s campaign called the suit “a despicable political threat to overturn an election.” The experts expect it to go nowhere before Election Day, and maybe nowhere at all. But it doesn’t have to win. It just has to sit there, loaded, while Alaska spends up to 15 days counting absentee ballots in a race that could decide who controls the Senate, so that if the numbers come back wrong, the excuse is already filed.
Donald Trump ordered his Justice Department to write a permission slip for throwing out Alaska’s votes if his guy loses, and he picked a retired schoolteacher’s name as the excuse.
The only person in Alaska who can’t tell which Dan Sullivan is which is the president of the United States.
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!!!!!!VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!!!!!!
BECAUSE IT DOES! TRUMP AND MAGA NAZIS ARE DESTROYING THIS COUNTRY TO ENRICH THEMSELVES AND THEIR CRONIES AND TAKING IT FROM THE WORKING RETIRED AND POOR! STRIPPING LAWFUL PROTECTIONS AND DOING AWAY WITH THE PROCEDURES TO REDRESS OUR VALID ISSUES! WHEN IT'S GONE IT'S GONE FOREVER!