{"id":901473,"date":"2026-10-31T21:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T21:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/901473\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T21:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T21:38:08","slug":"attorneys-for-alaska-say-meritless-trump-demand-to-set-aside-senate-ballots-not-even-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/901473\/","title":{"rendered":"Attorneys for Alaska say ‘meritless’ Trump demand to set aside Senate ballots ‘not even possible’"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE, Alaska \u2013 Alaska’s Republican-run state government on Saturday urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed at President Donald Trump’s direction<\/a> to stop the certification of a possible Democratic win in that state’s pivotal U.S. Senate race, writing that there is \u201cno reason for this Court to entertain this meritless lawsuit any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scathing filing from the state’s attorney general’s office comes as U.S. District Court Judge Sharon L. Gleason set a deadline of Saturday for arguments over whether she should dismiss the lawsuit without even a hearing. The complaint from the U.S. Department of Justice has been roundly criticized by election law experts and demands that the judge halt certification of a possible win by Democrat Mary Peltola until it is determined whether voters were confused by the presence of a second candidate on the ballot<\/a> with the same name as her main rival, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice on Friday added a request that the judge separate all ballots showing votes for the second Dan Sullivan until it can be determined whether voters were fooled into wasting their votes for a spoiler candidate. In its Saturday filing, Alaska said this was “both disturbing and impossible.\u201d It added there would be no way to do that without violating voter privacy.<\/p>\n

Trump also demanded that Peltola be prosecuted<\/a> after The New York Times this week reported that internal texts and posts appear to show the Democrats’ campaign was involved in recruiting the second Sullivan, a retired school teacher in the remote fishing village of Petersburg, onto the ballot. But the state filing notes that the two Sullivans are distinguished from each other on the ballot \u2014 the senator is listed as a Republican and the incumbent, while the other simply as \u201cDaniel J. Sullivan Jr.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cState officials carefully designed the ballot to minimize voter confusion,\u201d Alaska officials wrote. \u201cThe Court should immediately dismiss this lawsuit with prejudice and allow state officials to conduct the general election \u2014 including ballot counting and certification \u2014 free from unwarranted federal interference.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration argued that a preamble to the 1990s law governing voter registration gave it the responsibility for ensuring states maintained the \u201cintegrity\u201d of federal elections. It has said it\u2019s simply trying to combat fraud by preventing the Democrat from being declared the victor in a race that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice issued a wave of subpoenas and announced it was conducting a criminal investigation in the case as the administration has stepped up its use of its legal powers to support Trump’s side in the midterm election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Peltola has denied involvement<\/a> in the presence of the second Sullivan on the ballot. The Times report was based on interviews with her former campaign manager, texts and contributions from a political group backing Peltola to an out-of-state Democratic consultant who recruited the second Sullivan.<\/p>\n

Alaska\u2019s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, who announced a state probe into the situation after the Times story, has condemned the placement of the second Sullivan on the ballot. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled this summer that the second candidate fulfilled all legal requirements to stay on. The state government\u2019s filing on Saturday says that the new revelations about the possible role of Peltola\u2019s campaign don\u2019t change the fact that he\u2019s legally on the ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot every wrong can be righted in federal court,\u201d the state wrote.<\/p>\n

Peltola’s campaign and voting rights groups also have urged Gleason to dismiss the case, putting them in unusual alignment with Alaska state officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine if the federal executive could pluck a few words like \u2018election integrity\u2019 from some statutory preamble and, on that basis alone, bend the machinery of state elections to his will, preemptively blocking certification of a U.S. Senate election to protect his preferred candidate from defeat and then subjecting voters to a law-enforcement-led inquest about who they \u2018really\u2019 supported,\u201d the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a filing urging the lawsuit’s dismissal. \u201cImagine that world and ask whether it is what the Framers wanted or precisely what they most feared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANCHORAGE, Alaska \u2013 Alaska’s Republican-run state government on Saturday urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,118442,12,451,304993,3,111,377514,452,453,795,800],"class_list":["post-901473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-dan-sullivan","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-mary-peltola","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-sharon-l-gleason","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-u-s-news","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}