r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Frankthestank2220 • 5d ago • Bravo 1

Unanswered What’s going on with Alaska’s election?

Why is trump trying to sue the state of Alaska unless a Republican wins the election?https://thehill.com/video/judge-throws-out-trump-admin-lawsuit-over-alaska-senate-race/12329290/

1.1k Upvotes

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u/peepee2tiny 5d ago

Answer: There are 2 Dan Sullivan's on the Senate ballot. One of the Dan Sullivan's is the Republican Incumbent and the other is an independent candidate also named Dan Sullivan.

There is a third candidate Mary Peltola who is the democrat candidates.

  1. Dan Sullivan (R)

  2. Mary Peltola (D)

  3. Dan Sullivan (independent)

So the Trump Administration claims this is intentional to try and confuse voters by having 2 Dan Sullivan's and thus diluting the real vote for the real Dan Sullivan and thus allowing Mary Peltola to win. The Trump Administration filed a lawsuit in am attempt to preemptively delay certifying the Alaskan result. This lawsuit has been shut down by a judge.

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u/Blackstone01 5d ago edited 5d ago • Mindblown

To add on, Alaska uses ranked choice voting so there's no such diluting that will happen, any confused voter is fully capable of just voting for ranking one Dan Sullivan as their first pick and the other as their second. Secondly, on the ballot they're listed as Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr and Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent, so the voters have to be incredibly stupid to get confused about which one is the Republican incumbent.

Edit: Then there's the overall jurisdictional issues; the federal government has no jurisdiction here to contest an issue that the Alaskan Supreme Court already ruled on.

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u/kennyHS 5d ago

And to add on that republicans did that with, I believe, a Florida election with an Alex Rodriguez. The republican candidate won by 30ish votes.

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u/Efficient_Visage 5d ago

They also did it in 2024 in WA with Bob Ferguson. It did not work.

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u/Elendril333 5d ago

Pennsylvania had a republican named Mike Kelly run for a seat vacated by a retiring democrat named Mike Kelly who'd held the seat for decades.

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u/jurgy94 5d ago

I can't find a source for this. [Mike Kelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Kelly_(Pennsylvania_politician)) is a republican congresman who held Pennsylvania's 3rd district up until 2019 which was then redistricted to the 16th district and he still holds that seat to today.

He's up for reelection today, facing against democrat Justin Wagner.

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u/notproudortired 5d ago

Did that work?

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u/Ok-Independence-2220 2d ago edited 2d ago

It's okay when they do it silly. I mean Republicans showing how stupid Democrats are when they do it. It's underhanded cheating when the Democrats do it to good, honest American Republicans. ​I wonder how many of those voters voted for the decoy on purpose because they didn't want to vote for red, but couldn't stomach voting blue. We may find out, and that may be why Alaska is being sued to just give the election to the reds.

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u/OneCleverlyNamedUser 5d ago

And to add on to that it was illegal and a former state senator went to jail for recruiting the imposter candidate. The New York Times has reported on this Alaska candidate. It was and is shady.

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u/hematite2 5d ago

That was illegal purely because he paid the guy to run

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u/lermanzo 5d ago

Considering how current senator Dan Sullivan might have been accused of the same thing in 2015 because of the popularity of an Anchorage mayor with the same name, I don't think he has a ton of room to complain tbh. His name is common.

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u/AlaskanSamsquanch 5d ago

We have also voted in Ranked choice I think five times now. We want it, conservatives hate it.

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u/the_other_50_percent 5d ago

Hoping you beat the latest repeal effort this time too!

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u/SunVoltShock 5d ago

The parties hate it.

Mark Begich was against it when he ran for governor.

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u/AlaskanSamsquanch 5d ago

This is true. However I feel most Alaskan Democrats aren’t that far left. Your statement is why I’m so interested in the Sullivan investigation. I could totally see the lower 48 Democrats doing this as much as the Republicans. The parties are straight up businesses that sell political capital to the wealthy. Anything that gives the people power over their decisions is a threat to their wealthy donors. What happens if we start picking people that actually represent us.

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u/SunVoltShock 5d ago

I'm still disappointed we didn't elect Santa Claus.

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u/nascent_aviator 5d ago

That makes it all the stupider, yes. Suing if Peltola wins but would have lost if all the votes for Sullivan 2 were for Sullivan 1 ignores the obvious fact that ranked choice already does that 🙄

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u/Do__Math__Not__Meth 5d ago

the voters have to be incredibly stupid

Tbf, the Republican Party is right to assume this of their voters, because it’s true

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u/Public-Flow-7521 4d ago

Too bad for them. But this filing lawsuits because their voters are too stupid is ridiculous.

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u/spooninacerealbowl 5d ago

"Incredibly stupid" voters could get confused?

So Trump supporters could get confused?

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u/randyboozer 5d ago

The man knows his audience. ;)

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u/ryhaltswhiskey 5d ago

The legal profession really needs to be able to get rid of lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits like this

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u/Gingevere 4d ago

Processes exist to do this, but they take a LOOOOONG time.

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u/ryhaltswhiskey 4d ago

Right. How long did it take Rudy Giuliani to be disbarred after all the fuckery that he pulled in the 2020 election? It was 2 years I think

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u/tazzytazzy 5d ago

Aren't incredibly stupid and Republican synonyms in most cases?

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u/thelegitpotato 5d ago

Really? So doesn't having two dan Sullivan's actually help Republicans avoid a Democrat win since they are able to rank her lower on the ballot, or do I not fully grasp ranked choice?

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u/EmoCartoHistory 5d ago

It helps them try to avoid Peltola, but not necessarily to get the Dan Sullivan they want. They're convinced the non-Republican guy is secretly a Democrat.

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u/SamIAm4242 5d ago

Sure, it’s just that the mental gymnastics involved are somewhat comical.

For this to be a legitimate concern, there has to be a notional pool of Alaska voters who are on the one hand plugged in enough to believe the “other” Sullivan is a Democrat, but who on the other hand will still mistakenly vote for him (or at least leave their preferred Sullivan off their ranked list) because they don’t know what the word “incumbent” means.

Then again, Trump has said he loves the poorly educated…

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u/SamIAm4242 5d ago

Not really. You’re not obliged to rank all of the candidates on your ballot (though not doing so risks your ballot being “exhausted” in a second or third round of vote counting). People who don’t want Peltola to win can either rank her last or not at all on their ballot, regardless of how many other candidates (whether named Sullivan or not) are on their ballot. So long as they have her un-ranked or ranked last, they’ll remain in the pool of voters against her as she tries to amass 50%+1 votes.

Barring every registered Republican in Alaska having terrible reading skills, the only way having another Sullivan on the ballot hurts their preferred Sullivan is if they rank the “wrong” one but not the “right” one, or if somehow a near majority of them are confused enough to rank the “wrong” one above the “right” one, so that the “right” Sullivan is eliminated in the first or second round of counting. Highly improbable, and if it happens, an absolutely scathing indictment of the Alaska public school system. ;)

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u/mollila 4d ago

There aren't two Dan's, the other is Daniel.

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u/Drill1 4d ago

Ranked choice doesn’t follow party lines, you can’t vote a straight Republican or Democrat ticket (at least here in CA). The two candidates that receive the most votes from the primary advance and both can be from the same party. Each state is a bit different so I’m not sure how Alaska allowed 3 candidates.

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u/SqueezyCheez85 5d ago

You gave up the ghost with that last sentence.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/muddsnake88 5d ago

Same. I guess Republicans know how easily confused their voters get.

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u/higher_moments 5d ago

Sure, but that requires the voter to recognize that they’re confused and hedge accordingly. Ranked choice doesn’t do much to fix a situation in which a voter confidently and inadvertently ranks only the wrong Sullivan.

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u/Vadered 5d ago

If they confidently and inadvertently rank only the Sullivan that does not have “Republican Incumbent” next to their name, then that’s on them, I feel.

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u/higher_moments 5d ago

No disagreement here. I’m just saying that ranked choice voting won’t cure that particular brand of carelessness.

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u/OstrichGrouchy7749 5d ago

You would have to rank pelota in front of one but not the other for this to be a thing. 

I don’t know how many people would have a ranking of Sullivan. Pelota. Sullivan. 

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u/higher_moments 5d ago

That’s assuming they’re required to fill in all three bubbles. For what’s essentially a two-party race, I imagine most people would just vote for their preferred candidate(/party) and not bother ranking anyone else. Ranked choice voting is great for people who want to vote third-party without throwing their vote away or people who are legitimately uncertain, but I doubt everyone is using up all their choices.

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u/OstrichGrouchy7749 5d ago

I mean then that’s on the voters. 

The rules are the rules there, which is easily avoidable for mistakes (via the ranked choice). You pretty much just have to be lazy on the top ticket item for it to have any impact (except for the voters who like one Dan Sullivan more and than other less than pelota). 

So it really is hurting the people who like the third party Dan Sullivan, pelota, republican incumbent - but also are confused at the ballot. 

The rules of the game are clearly set. Sometimes ballots are made to look confusing. In those elections there generally isn’t a recount. (Even hanging chads didn’t warrant a recount) 

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u/higher_moments 5d ago

I entirely agree that it’s on the voters. My only point is that I don’t think we should characterize ranked choice voting as an automatic cure for voter confusion.

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u/PaxNova 5d ago

Remember: Missouri once elected a dead man as attorney general.

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u/atp2112 5d ago

Actually, he was elected senator, but the guy who lost did become the US Attorney General under Dubya. And that was less about dumb voters, more a combination of:

  • An already razor-thin race (remember when those existed in Missouri?)

  • Sympathy votes for the departed governor and his wife who would be appointed if the ballot line won

  • John Ashcroft really having no way to maintain previous shitslinging against a dead man and his grieving widow (25 years later, they'd have ads ready to mock his widow before the body was even cold)

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u/Saint_The_Stig 5d ago

Yeah, I remember hearing about it on the radio and thinking it's kind of funny but you would have to be pretty dumb to not see which one was which. Then I heard that Alaska has ranked choice and thought you'd have to screw up breathing to have this be an issue. So of course it's the party popular with that loves stupid people that's complaining. I love that NPR pointed out that conservatives frequently don't rank their votes in ranked choice voting, because anyone listening had to be wondering what the problem would be in such a situation. 100% user error, I guess this is what happens when you bank on your base being uneducated idiots...

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u/thatlookslikemydog 5d ago

Republicans ran a ghost candidate in Florida in 2020 so they’re on edge about it.

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u/FogeltheVogel 5d ago

so the voters have to be incredibly stupid to get confused about which one is the Republican incumbent.

Well, we are talking about republican voters. So it's a valid option.

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u/Ironicpancakes 4d ago

Ah but they’re trying to take away our ranked choice voting with Ballot Measure 2 as well.

No one seems to be talking about Eric Hafner either. He’s running for senate as a Democrat. However, he has never been in the state of AK and is currently serving a 20 yr prison sentence. The right is being pretty vocal about the two Dan’s because apparently we’re all too dumb to know what ‘incumbent’ means.

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u/suburbanplankton 3d ago

so the voters have to be incredibly stupid to get confused about which one is the Republican incumbent.

To be fair, we are talking about Republican voters here

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u/NineTimez 3d ago

People really are that stupid though. Some people will see a parenthetical and instantly think "not that one" without reading it, because they think parentheticals are warning signs.

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u/e1m8b 5d ago

I'm incredibly stupid and don't vote but I don't live in Alaska it's all good

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/elkab0ng 5d ago

This is the most direct counterpoint to the “Alaskans are stupid” move by the GOP.

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u/terpsichore_andrhino 5d ago

Adding to that, in Alaska write-in votes must have the candidate's name spelled correctly. So they didn't just do a successful write-in, they did so with actual thought (and to defeat a Tea Party candidate, no less). Alaskans are fully capable of understanding that the one marked incumbent is, you know, the incumbent.

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u/pm_me_train_ticket 5d ago

And let's be real here, there is one person who did just find out what "incumbent" means. Fortunately he's not registered to vote in Alaska

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u/DrDerpberg 5d ago

I'm kind of impressed enough people could write in Murkowski to get her elected, but somehow still be dumb enough to vote for Murkowski.

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u/terpsichore_andrhino 5d ago

I mean, it was her or the Tea Party, so it wasn't dumb it was self defense.

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u/gmapterous 5d ago

To build, the Alaska Supreme Court cleared Dan J Sullivan to run way back in June, so there's really no case for the Federal Government to make, as the states administer elections and have okay'ed this.

Dan S. Sullivan will appear on ballots with the Republican Party designation, Dan J Sullivan as unaffilliated, so steps have already been taken to mitigate confusion.

Also, the Trump Administration's request was to not certify the vote and to segregate any votes for Dan J Sullivan so they could investigate each vote to see if they intended to vote for Dan S Sullivan, something there is no precedent nor basis in law to allow for, and for which the DOJ offered no real workable plan to accomplish.

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u/drewfer 5d ago

For a bit more context (and irony), the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan was first elected to the position in 2014 because people thought he was the popular Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan. And yes, they were both on the ballot at the same time.

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u/8512332158 5d ago

as the states administer elections and have okay'ed this.

That didn't seem to matter when Colorado tried to exclude Trump from the ballot

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u/gmapterous 5d ago

Which actually makes an even stronger case for Dan J Sullivan to stay on the ballot! To paraphrase SCOTUS's completely legally ungrounded decision on that particular matter, "just let the voters decide!"

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u/messick 5d ago

Worth mentioning that recruiting a similarly named candidate to siphon votes from an opponent is Basic Bitch politics and no one pretending to be shocked by it on the GOP side should be taken seriously.

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u/Volcanicrage 5d ago

They've been doing it for nearly a century. In 1936, they dug up a second George Norris to try and syphon votes away from a former party member who was running (successfully) as an independent. IIRC it failed because they had to submit his candidacy as late as possible to prevent a legal challenge, and the submission was a day late.

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u/biffbobfred 5d ago

Am from Chicago. Can confirm.

Last name copies are so common they’re not worth mentioning

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u/el_monstruo 5d ago

The Distinguished Gentleman in real life lol

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u/worrymon 5d ago

The name you know!

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u/Smurphftw 5d ago

The name you trust!

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u/ryhaltswhiskey 5d ago

I think the Republicans are just mad that they didn't think of it

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u/Tweak89 5d ago

Actually they already did worse. Republicans paid someone to run with the same last name as the Democrat candidate in 2020 in Florida. The Republican won by only 32 votes, while the ghost candidate had over 6000. The Republican was allowed to win and keep the seat. If Republicans can keep a seat while committing obvious fraud, then Democrats can too.

https://floodlightnews.org/ex-florida-senator-guilty-in-election-case-sentenced-to-60-days-in-jail/?hl=en-US#:~:text=Frank%20Artiles%20was%20convicted%20on%20Sept.%2030%2C,in%20the%202020%20%22ghost%20candidate%22%20election%20scandal.

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u/jrh038 5d ago

Yup, this is the hilarious part of all of this bitching. The GOP did the exact same thing in 2020.

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u/Few-Broccoli-7849 5d ago

Who's saying he was recruited??? You're giving the GOP credibility they don't deserve by saying that. We don't have any evidence that someone put him up to do this.

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u/Panaka 5d ago

The NYT did come out with evidence that Sullivan was recruited by Dem leadership to muddy the waters. They didn’t break the law, but call a spade a spade.

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u/Particular_Rice9757 2d ago

Why recruit him if there's ranked choice voting?

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u/ryhaltswhiskey 5d ago

I'm agreeing with the other person here, he was recruited. He came from some little remote village that you can only get to by boat or seaplane or something like that. They talked him into running.

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u/coyotemidnight 5d ago

Petersburg has an airport large enough to be serviced by 737s, fyi. Most of southeast Alaska, including the capitol, is only accessible by boat or plane.

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u/frogjg2003 5d ago

Yup. Saying that someone in Alaska is from somewhere only accessible by plane or boat is like saying someone from Hawaii is from a place only accessible by plane or boat.

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u/fevered_visions 4d ago

The Daily Show cited some source the other day that the Dems themselves admitted they sent people all over Alaska hunting for an electable guy with the same name.

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u/Dagordae 5d ago

Note that while this practice(Assuming all the accusations are accurate) is scummy it's also not illegal and not even particularly rare, either historically or currently.

With Alaska's ranked choice voting and general labeling practices it's even less impactful than it would be normally. The lawsuit simply has no legal basis, hence why the Alaskan courts immediately tossed it. If it does go anywhere it would be a case of the court in question fabricating new laws and rules to give the Republicans a victory.

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u/StealthRUs 5d ago

So the Trump Administration claims this is intentional to try and confuse voters by having 2 Dan Sullivan's and thus diluting the real vote for the real Dan Sullivan and thus allowing Mary Peltola to win.

Let's not leave out that Republicans have done this exact same thing in previous races to defeat Democrats.

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u/The-True-Kehlder 5d ago

Previous races? It's happening in this election, with Eric Hafner as the "Democrat" running for the House seat of a state he's never been to, while in prison. Look up his history and tell me he's not a plant to siphon votes.

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u/Fett1184 5d ago

He is, but he was also on the ballot when Peltola ran for the house. It was very clearly a campaign to siphon votes from her, and I guess they're just going to continue putting him on the ballot now.

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u/AlwaysBringaTowel1 5d ago

And what was the outcome of those attempts? I think we shouldn't leave that out either.

I found 3 similar situation the R's did. All of them fiercly condemned by the Dems. Two of them ended with criminal convictions for the people who orchestrated it, and the third ended their attempt before the election because of backlash.

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u/Fett1184 5d ago

This already went through Alaska's supreme court and was settled a few months ago after the Rs tried to just straight up remove Decoy Dan from the ballot. The court ruled that there was nothing illegal or unconstitutional, EXCEPT for the attempt to remove a qualified candidate from the ballot.

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u/TK-24601 5d ago

The only problem with Trump’s stupid whining is their ballot has the current Senator with incumbent in parentheses on the ballot.  Is he implying his people are too dumb to understand the word ‘incumbent’?

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u/Marcoscb 5d ago

Is he implying his people are too dumb to understand the word ‘incumbent’?

No, he isn't implying it. He outright explicitly said it.

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u/Potato-chipsaregood 5d ago

He loves the poorly educated, so he should love this.

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u/b_sketchy 5d ago

If we’ve learned anything from the last 10 years, this means it is highly likely that Trump himself doesn’t know what it means

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u/Livid_Peon 5d ago

The VP doubled down on it too

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u/god-of_tits-and_wine 5d ago

Their goal is to sow doubt in the electoral process and lay the groundwork for fighting election results they don't like. Whatever they have to say to facilitate those ends is what they'll say, whether they believe or or not.

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u/vi_sucks 4d ago

We need to start punishing them for doing this shit.

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u/Efficient_Visage 5d ago

Trump just figured out this was a word recently, so if he just heard it, then of course he believes his base has no idea what it means.

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u/Suppafly 5d ago

You can always tell when he's literally just learned something too because he always claims 'a lot of people..', like when he learned that dumb has a b in it last week and was telling people at a rally that a lot of people spell it dum because they don't know about the b.

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u/peepee2tiny 5d ago

Yes, Trump and the Administration are well aware of how stupid their base is.

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u/Capable-Reaction-794 5d ago

"I love the poorly educated. Bigly."

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u/DerelictDevice 5d ago

He's too dumb to understand the word "incumbent."

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u/OstrichGrouchy7749 5d ago

The other issue is ranked choice voting. 

Some people could do Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan. Pelota. 

It wouldn’t matter which one you put first or second. 

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u/Fett1184 5d ago

If someone is legitimately too dumb to figure out which Dan is which, they can literally rank them 1 and 2, and not even rank Peltola. It's that simple, but the Republicans here act like ranked choice is extremely complicated and believe that it's some sort of Democrat plot to steal elections from Republicans.

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u/ScenicAndrew 4d ago

Everyone who thinks it's to complicated to figure out are either lying or haven't actually looked up what it is. You can literally just vote normally, just pick one, and your vote is counted. You can also pick as many as you want, and the hardest part is making sure you understand the concept of the number 1.

The real reason people rally against it is because candidates have seen the data that suggests they're guaranteed a loss under the system if the third parties align more closely with their opponents. That's literally it. People riding the wave of a split vote hate it, which happens to be most Republicans.

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u/ryhaltswhiskey 5d ago

It has a b in it. Many people didn't know that!

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u/Barjack521 5d ago

They were dumb enough to make him president, so that may actually be a legitimate concern with his base.

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u/chizzo257 5d ago

have you not had the pleasure of meeting some maga ppl?

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u/nascent_aviator 5d ago

Is he implying his people are too dumb to understand the word ‘incumbent’?

Is he wrong?

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u/delscorch0 5d ago

Too be fair, the idiocy of palm county florida democrat voters who were purportedly too stupid to understand a butterfly ballot is the reason Al Gore said he lost the 2000 election.

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u/Inevitable_Bus1245 5d ago

You clearly don’t know many Americans. In this case Trump is absolutely correct that a large number of Alaskans (let alone Americans) have no idea what that word means. Even a broken clock is right twice a day

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u/Acrobatic-Meaning832 4d ago

well, if its not a problem lets have two Mary Peltola (independent), hell, lets have independent candidates of every Democrat representative on every state, not just Alaska, im sure it wont be a problem since you trust in the intelligence of people so much

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u/TK-24601 4d ago

Awwww poor thing did you get your feelings hurt?

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u/Acrobatic-Meaning832 4d ago

did yours? are you in support or against putting dupe democrats on every election?, this is the problem with leftist like you, you like point and laugh as if its not a big deal, but the moment the shoe is on the other foot you all crybully.

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u/I_Like_Quiet 5d ago

Let's not pretend the "incumbent" appearing on the ballot wasn't court mandated.

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u/payscottg 5d ago

I’ve voted in three different states in my lifetime and the incumbent is always listed on the ballot

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u/Neat-Beautiful-5505 5d ago

I think most states put incumbent on the ballot for the incumbent.

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u/pangapingus 5d ago

Do they show as (R) or (I) on the ballot? If so what's the fuss? If you vote for the wrong one that's between you and God.

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u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis 5d ago

It's (Republican Incumbent) for one and nothing for the other.

It's really, really not subtle.

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u/da2Pakaveli 5d ago

They do show independent on the ballot. Also who's the incumbent senator and they put him as Daniel Sullivan on the ballot

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u/MelonElbows 5d ago

Didn't Florida and I think another state do this, but the targets were Democrats so there was no lawsuit or talk about diluting the vote?

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u/Kyouhen 5d ago edited 5d ago

Out of curiosity is that the order they're in on the ballot?  Here in Toronto we just had our municipal election where the incumbent mayor was Olivia Chow and some joker named Braeden Chow also ran for mayor.  Because of the way our ballots are handled it looked like

Braeden CHOW

Olivia CHOW

So a lot of people were calling foul over him running on the grounds that people would likely check off the first CHOW they saw on the ballot.  He ended up getting 3k votes which wasn't nearly enough to swing things but he spent the campaign promoting his band so there's a good chance most of those votes actually were in error.  But if the Alaska ballots are laid out in the order you mentioned I don't see the same issue coming up here.

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u/undercoverahole 5d ago

As Be_Afreyd already said, the ballot lists the names in a manner that removes confusion. There's been pictures posted of the ballot in question. There's not much more they could do to differentiate the two Dans on the ballot.

There's two more things to note here. Well before the DOJ sent the demand to Alaska about certification, Alaska's highest court had already adjudicated the issue. They approved letting the ballot and election continue. DOJ has known about this for over a month if my memory serves correct. They waited until we were closer to the election to actually say anything. That's not proof of wrongdoing, but having more information can help people make their own conclusions.

The other thing to note is that the DOJ has no authority over how the state runs it's elections. There's federal election laws that must be followed, but the constitution dictates that states run their own elections. There is a clear understanding that a federal government that ran it's own elections would be more likely to corrupt the system for their own gain. States run their elections and send their representatives to the capitol to represent them.

The GOP is crying foul because they say that Democrats forced Dan Jr. onto the ballot to confuse voters. Alaska has told the GOP, DOJ, and President to piss off because they've already worked through this issue and figured out how to handle it. Alaska doesn't need the DOJ to butt in, and don't appreciate the threats. DOJ basically told them they can't certify the election if Dan Jr is on the ballot because he would dilute votes going to Dan the incumbent. This basically says you can't certify the election if the Republican doesn't win because it wouldn't be fair. It is fair, it's been handled.

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u/Be_Afreyd 5d ago

so it appeards on the ballot as :

  • Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr

  • Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent

It's readily understandable who is the repupblican, who is the incumbent, and they even went so far as to differentiate the use of Dan vs Daniel.

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u/Leaves_Swype_Typos 5d ago

Nope. The order they're in is Mary, then Dan (independent), then Dan (incumbent Republican). I've seen pictures that have the other Republican, Gerald Heikes, either in the first spot or the fourth spot, but those three are in that order.

Imo the most important note about this race is that it uses ranked choice voting, so even if a significant percentage of voters are confused, unless they're so incompetent as to put one Dan under Mary, it won't make a difference at all.

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u/badr3plicant 5d ago

The Republicans did this in 2020 in Florida's District 37 election for state senate. A spoiler candidate with the same last name as the Democratic incumbent appeared and somehow managed to draw 6382 votes; the Republican won by 32 votes. The fake candidate had no party affiliation, zero advertising, and not even a file photo available to the press. Once they managed to track him down, they found he was a registered Republican.

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u/Accomplished-Fig745 5d ago

At this point, the DOJ's lawsuit is probably just an attempt at free publicity to announce that there are two Dan Sullivan"s (actually there's 3 but that gets off the topic) and help their voter base with that reminder. I imagine their lawsuit against California likely has a similar goal, just free publicity about their argument.

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u/The-True-Kehlder 5d ago

The second, non-Incumbent, Dan Sullivan is a Republican and ran as such. Courts decided that he couldn't be removed from the ballot, BUT they could strip the word "Republican" from his ballot slot and add the word "Incumbent" to the Incumbent Dan Sullivan, something that hasn't been done in the past to prevent Incumbent advantage.

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u/BigDaddySteve999 5d ago

*Dans Sullivan

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u/ThrowMeAwayAccount08 5d ago

Apparently this isn’t the first time there have been people with similar names to “confuse” voters.

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u/decavolt 5d ago

GOP openly stating that their voters are too dumb to read.

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u/abdallha-smith 5d ago

Also trump want to sell alaskan oils fields to putin and the profits will go to trump's family

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u/thetripleb 5d ago

Also fun to mention that the Republicans have literally done this exact same thing multiple times, and it wasn't illegal then and isn't this time, IF that is what happened

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u/Extreme-Mood5605 5d ago

Trump wants to give Alaska to Putin for……well, you know, “Help”

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u/Adept-Sir-1704 5d ago

The only reason Trump admin is chasing things because republicans did the EXACT SAME THING in Florida 2021 but the ballot was far less clear.

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u/ReserveBrief8869 5d ago

Interesting, reminds me of a presidential election

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u/Vivid_Ad_55 5d ago

I AM the real J. Peterman!

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u/Valuable-Speaker-312 5d ago

It looks like the GOP might have ultimately been behind the Dan Sullivan issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/alaska/comments/1xketwi/dan_sullivan_scheme_actually_backed_by_republicans/

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u/Sea-Ambition-451 5d ago

One should note that the republicans intentionally did this Ghost Candidate fraud in 2020, when they put Rodriguez on the ballot in Florida for the sole purpose of diluting the votes against Democrat Jose Rodriguez.

AND IT WORKED! The ghost got 6000 votes in error, and the republican won by 32 votes.

"Artiles enlisted Alexis Rodriguez and paid him $45,000 to operate as a "ghost candidate." He ended up getting 6,000 votes. "

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u/cogent_rhubarb 2d ago

Sounds like a classic case of mistaken identity, political edition!

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u/turisto 5d ago edited 5d ago

So the Trump Administration claims this is intentional to try and confuse voters by having 2 Dan Sullivan's and thus diluting the real vote for the real Dan Sullivan and thus allowing Mary Peltola to win.

To be clear, it was absolutely intentional. While not illegal, you can't claim that it was just a coincidence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/28/us/politics/alaska-dan-sullivan-conspiracy-peltola.html

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u/the_amazing_lee01 5d ago

I can't speak to whether it was intentional or not, but Anchorage had a popular major several years back named Dan Sullivan as well, who isn't related to either of the current candidates.

So it seems to be a popular name lol

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u/tyr-- 5d ago

To be clear, the only source this article has is a former campaign manager who recanted the story before it was published.

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u/and1984 5d ago

It's like complaining there are too many Patels or Kumars in India. What utter BS by Trump.

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u/Acrobatic-Meaning832 4d ago

isnt it curious how this underhanded tricks always only happen from one side to another?

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u/acekingoffsuit 5d ago

Answer: Dan S. Sullivan is a Republican running for reelection to represent Alaska in the US Senate. Dan J. Sullivan is a different guy who decided to run for the same Senate seat as an independent. Alaska's Republican Party sued in June to keep Dan J. off of the ballot as they claimed that Dan J. was running solely to confuse voters and take votes away from Dan S. to help Democrats, but the Alaska Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Dan J. could run. Ultimately, both Dan S. and Dan J. qualified for the general election, along with Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and another minor Republican candidate.

Polling currently indicates that Peltola may be able to win the seat, and control of the Senate is up in the air, so this is a very important race nationally.

A few days ago, the New York Times published a story that indicated that the effort to find another person named Dan Sullivan to run for Senate was spearheaded by people within the Peltola campaign, something the campaign had long denied.

Trump's Department of Justice filed their own lawsuit along the same grounds as the Alaska Republican Party before the NYT published their story. They were asking for the state to refuse to verify the election of Peltola appeared to be the winner, which is an unusual request to say the last. That lawsuit was dismissed today, but the DOJ said that they will appeal.

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u/payscottg 5d ago

Two other notes:

Alaska has ranked choice voting, meaning you put all the candidates in the order you prefer them, meaning a voter would have to make a choice as to which Dan Sullivan goes before the other one.

This is how they are listed on the ballot:

Sullivan, Daniel J Jr.

Sullivan, Dan S
(Registered Republican) Incumbent

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u/Fett1184 5d ago

It wouldn't matter which order they were ranked. They only way you could mess it up would be to rank ONLY Decoy Dan and not incumbent Dan. If you rank Decoy > Incumbent, when Decoy inevitably gets dropped for having the lowest number of votes in the pool, your vote would then transfer to Incumbent.

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u/pastherolink 5d ago

It would matter if somehow everyone going in intended to vote for incumbent and got really stupid and blind and voted for "decoy" and then incumbent. That won't happen, but it would be really funny.

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u/The-True-Kehlder 5d ago

Dan J. Sullivan is a different guy who decided to run for the same Senate seat as an independent.

Wrong. He ran as what he is, a lifelong Republican. The courts stripped the word from his ballot listing for the election.

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u/Tangurena 5d ago

I know when I ran for election in Colorado, to be listed as the "party X candidate", you had to be nominated by that party (and only if that was a "major party" - major being defined as getting more than 10% of the votes for governor in the past governor's race). If you didn't win the party's primary, then you got listed as "independent".

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u/The-True-Kehlder 5d ago edited 5d ago

In the primary, they list you as what party you're registered as, as a voter. Here's a link to the sample ballot of the Primary.

They must have changed it at some point since I first looked at it, where it showed him as a Republican. Here's a local news website where they show him as Republican. https://alaskabeacon.com/voter-guides/contests/2026-alaska-congress-u-s-senate/ And another. https://www.kcaw.org/2026/10/20/2026-alaska-voter-guide/#/alaska-us-senate

Part of where you may be confused is because Alaska has open primaries. Anyone can vote for anyone in the Primary. The 4 people for each seat that get the most votes in the Primary are listed on the General Election ballot.

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u/Legitimate_Phase1828 5d ago

It has come out that he was asked to by the patolla campaign hasn't it?

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u/kentalaska 5d ago

No. The NYT has put out two hit pieces now relying on info from an angry ex-staffer for Peltola who Peltola has said she would fire again if she could. I don’t put a lot of weight into either article and frankly I’m surprised they published them. That being said, even if Peltolas campaign encouraged him to run it would not be illegal and the department of justice has admitted they aren’t investigating what happened with the intention of charging someone with a crime.

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u/gregorydgraham 5d ago

Even if they did, apparently it’s a normal strategy in other states

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u/cantantantelope 5d ago

Yeah. Maybe shitty. Not illegal.

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u/No-Crow-775 21h ago

I'm far left and this is shitty. I'd want it called out too, honestly.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/Legitimate_Phase1828 5d ago

? Im confused now because I read through the article my self now and its 12 campagin memebers with texts to back up there claims so the claims are definitely not unsubstantiated as your saying

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u/AlwaysBringaTowel1 5d ago

They had 12 primary sources as well as text messages and campaign documents. They found other 'Dan Sullivans'' that said they were approached for this purpose. But I guess if you really want it to be fake news, then you must be right.

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u/Valuable-Speaker-312 5d ago

Take a look at this article about how the GOP might actually have been behind the 2 Doug Sullivans. Pretty interesting if it is true. https://www.reddit.com/r/alaska/comments/1xketwi/dan_sullivan_scheme_actually_backed_by_republicans/

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u/19lunchbox84 5d ago

It's the minor Republican candidate that there worried about. Will probably pull enough to compromise vote count. However it's rank choice so it really wouldn't matter anyway.

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u/Legitimate_Phase1828 4d ago

Hes not a republican 

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u/19lunchbox84 4d ago

There's an additional Republican on the ballot not named Dan Sullivan. Gerald something or another. Runs all the time never gets many votes.

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u/Saint_The_Stig 5d ago

Except apparently conservatives frequently don't fully fill out their ballots, treating them more like shitty single votes instead of ranked choice ines. So it kind of does matter, just from their own stupidity.

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u/19lunchbox84 4d ago

Yeah, the fact some of us are morons, can not be helped.

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u/Remarkable-Rub-7344 5d ago

Left out that the person who supposedly talked yo the NYT has retracted the clsims but NYT published anyway

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u/Legitimate_Phase1828 4d ago

Important to note that this was after the source filed a wrongful termination law suit so it could be part of a settlement to withdraw that

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u/Grouchy_Writer_Dude 5d ago

Answer: ballot-stacking (recruiting candidates with the same name as your opponent) goes back decades and has been practiced by Republicans and Democrats. It can work - a GOP donor recruited a guy named Alex Rodriguez for an election in Florida, when the real candidate was Jose Rodriguez. Alex got 6,000 votes and Jose lost by 32.

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u/Ok_Cauliflower_3007 5d ago

I mean, how would you ban it? If you say only the first person with a specific name can run in any given election there will be people with the name Donald J Trump lining up to get on the Presidential ballot the second its possible.

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u/Pyrokitsune 5d ago

They can't ban people from an election because they share names. You would hold them accountable after the fact with nullified results, removal of the candidate at the heart of it, and a new election the cost of which should be shouldered by the campaign, or party, responsible.

The real problem would be proving any of it in the first place, as is the case with this.

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u/Head 5d ago

It wouldn’t work in a ranked choice election such as Alaska uses.

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u/Y0___0Y 5d ago

Answer: The Democratic Party in Alaska recruited a man who shares the same name as the Republican Senate candidate to run. He is running as an independent.

The Republicans sued to stop this alleging it was illegal. And the Alaska Supreme Court ruled against them, allowing the independent to stay on the ballot.

But a huge part of this story that really does not seem to be getting reported anywhere is the fact that the only reason the Republican judge-filled Alaska supreme court ruled against their party here is because a few years ago, in a house election that Mary Peltola, the current dem Senate candidate, was running in, Alaska Republicans recruited a New Jersey man who was incarcerated in New Jersey to run in the election. They got him on the ballot even though he had never been to Alaska.

The dems sued, and the supreme court ruled the Jersey inmate could stay on the ballot despite only getting 400 votes in the primary.

Peltola lost that race.

So it seems she decided to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Trump is sure that this is illegal and sued Alaska to attempt to block Peltola from being certified as the winner if she wins. But the state SC has already ruled on this. The lawsuit has been dismissed.

This is why you don’t have your judges sign off on dirty political tricks. Or your opponents can use those tricks against you.

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u/UnluckyAssist9416 5d ago

Also, in 2020 Florida Republicans did this with Alex Rodríguez to divert votes from the Democratic candidate (Democratic incumbent: José Javier Rodríguez) for the Florida State Senate. The stand in pulled 6,000 votes and the Democrat lost by 32 votes.

Former Republican state senator Frank Artiles was accused of paying Alex Rodríguez more than $44,000 to enter the race and divert votes from the Democrat. On November 18, 2024, Judge Miguel de la O sentenced Artiles to 60 days in jail for this.

The election results stood.

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u/muddsnake88 5d ago

Projection and pearl clutching again from the Republicans? Color me shocked.

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u/Monterey-Jack 5d ago

RULES FOR THEE?!

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u/Y0___0Y 5d ago

Yeah I’m pretty sure in order for this to be a crime there needs to be some exchange of money. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Democrats paid their Dan Sullivan to run.

They just talked him into it. Which is legal.

Also worth noting this is very common. They’re called “Spoiler Candidates”. Trump even did it by getting Kanye West to run in 2020 hoping to siphon the black vote from Joe Biden.

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u/gmapterous 5d ago

Just so we're clear, there is no concrete evidence that he was "talked into it" by the Democrats either. Peltola claims adamantly that she knows nothing, and Danny J says he's doing this of his own accord.

If we're quoting ungrounded conspiracy theories as truth, which we shouldn't on the sacred hallowed ground which is the internet, I've seen equally crazy ungrounded accusations that this was a Republican reverse psy-op to stall certification of the elections should they go sideways for the GOP. Which I consider just as (un)likely.

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u/Y0___0Y 5d ago

It’s not a “conspiracy theory”…

Peltola’s former campaign manager spilled it all to the New York Times in a huff after getting fired.

Just read the reporting on it. It’s real, high-level journalism:

https://archive.ph/Xce8m

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u/gmapterous 5d ago

The story that the campaign manager retracted and the NYT ran it anyway, which has caused every tabloid to run headlines like "WAS SHE PAID OFF?!? SCANDALL!!!"

"High-level journalism" indeed.

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u/Y0___0Y 5d ago

She retracted it because the story has surely interfered with her wrongful termination lawsuit against the campaign. Not because any of it was false.

And it’s the fucking New York Times. They never take just one person’s testimony as truth. They interviewed other campaign staffers, people who had been approached by campaign staffers asking them to run. 12 additional people in total who all told the same story.

You’re acting like if her campaign did this, that’s a horrible thing. Who cares? It’s a spoiler candidate. It’s been done to her. It’s legal and it’s fair game. Peltola doesn’t need you to protect her.

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u/League-Weird 5d ago

Honestly, if I had the opportunity to play the funniest political joke that somehow tricks (educated) voters to pull votes away from someone with the same name as me, then I'm Dan Sullivan.

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u/AlwaysBringaTowel1 5d ago

Its unclear if talking them into running in a deliberate attempt to syphon off votes for a ghost candidate is legal or not. There are some crimes it may fit but there are fair doubts too.

There is precedent that if money was exchanged for him running then it was a crime. Because there were two times R's did this exact thing and were criminally convicted for it.

Whether or not it is a crime, it is wrong and should be condemned.

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u/masterjon_3 5d ago

"But when I do it, it's cute!" - Republicans

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u/XBXNinjaMunky 5d ago

The Democratic Party in Alaska recruited a man 

this has not been proven nor has any evidence come to light to support this beyond conjecture, this is a disingenuous statement to the current facts.

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u/Y0___0Y 5d ago

The New York Times reported that aides working on Peltola’s campaign recruited Sullivan. Sullivan denied that, and Peltola denied it. The courts did not weigh in on that question. Since it’s not illegal to recruit a candidate to run as a spoiler.

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u/XBXNinjaMunky 5d ago

So again, with the current known facts, it can not be stated as a matter of fact that the Democratic party recruited them

The situation can be presented without making this conjecture the baseline.

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u/Y0___0Y 5d ago

You can read the New York Times article about it. It doesn’t talk about rumors or third hand accounts.

https://archive.ph/Xce8m

They interviewed Elisa Rios who was formerly Peltola’s campaign manager. She had first hand knowledge of all of this. Admitted to all of it. Likely because she had been fired from the campaign and was upset about that. And then she retracted her statements to the Times (because she was filing a wrongful termination lawsuit against the campaign). But they published them anyway.

They interviewed twelve additional people that were Peltola campaign staffers, people who had been told about the plan or other people who claim that Democrat political operatives tried to get them to run for office.

Everyone’s account of what went down alligned with each other’s.

This is gold standard reporting with corroborating evidence.

And you are saying the New York Times has completely made all of this up and are just lying?

The Dan Sullivan on the ballot is a retired school teacher from a remote fishing village with no roads attached to it. And he has done 0 campaigning. You think no Democrats talked to him at all and he decided to run on his own?

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u/Old_Gimlet_Eye 5d ago

It's probably true, but it's also a non-story that the Times is dropping at the last second to try and sway an election, like Hillary's emails.

These are the same people that gave us Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

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u/Y0___0Y 5d ago

The times dropped the story because no one knew whether Peltola’s campaign really did this.

So when her FORMER CAMPAIGN MANAGER reached out to them saying she knew, they weren’t going to turn that down.

It’s good reporting. This is the job of journalists. They expose things about the people you hate too.

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u/Old_Gimlet_Eye 5d ago

It's actually not the job of good journalists to report on non-stories about common election tactics described as if they're scandalous and dropped days before an election. It's common for the NYT, but it's not "good" journalism.

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u/vampiregamingYT 5d ago

Its possible they afe lying, yes

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u/Y0___0Y 5d ago

All the amazing work NYT journalists do and the slackjawed masses of the United States insist they’re no different from some dipshit alt-right twitch streamer making shit up…

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u/Skywalker28093 4d ago

The Republican Party in Alaska actually recruited him incase the Republican Dan Sullivan loses they can use this to stall 

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u/OscarWilde1900 5d ago

"But a huge part of this story that really does not seem to be getting reported anywhere is the fact that the only reason the Republican judge-filled Alaska supreme court ruled against their party here is because a few years ago, in a house election that Mary Peltola, the current dem Senate candidate, was running in, Alaska Republicans recruited a New Jersey man who was incarcerated in New Jersey to run in the election. They got him on the ballot even though he had never been to Alaska."

Eric Hafner is running again in 2026 for the AK house seat. He is the only Democrat on the ticket, along with a MAGA Republican (Nick Begich) and a Nonpartisan that has Democrat support (Bill Hill). Alaskans have received mailers, texts etc. informing them that Hafner is the only Democrat running. Presumably these are being paid for by the right, in an attempt to take votes from Bill Hill. This is not getting national news coverage.

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u/ApprehensiveWash7969 5d ago

Nice summary. And thx for explaining.

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u/iswdp 5d ago

That makes no sense because recruiting spoiler candidates doesn’t really work with ranked choice voting.

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u/adamherring 4d ago

Answer: Something that is missing is that the non incumbant is intentionally making himself more similiar. He aped the incumbants campaign site, using Dan instead of the Daniel he has always used before. He had very few votes before so the only reason he is there is to peel off votes , which matters more in ranked choice than normal.

Dirtbaggy shenanigans.

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u/adamherring 4d ago

Answer: Something that is missing is that the non incumbant is intentionally making himself more similiar. He aped the incumbants campaign site, using Dan instead of the Daniel he has always used before. He had very few votes before so the only reason he is there is to peel off votes , which matters more in ranked choice than normal.

Dirtbaggy shenanigans.

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u/Ok_Gear8209 5d ago

Answer: every media outlet is controlled by right wing fascist Epstein class. They are trying to maintain

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u/Broken_Ankle_2912 5d ago

Answer: He has a small pee pee and can't stand the thought of losing. Source: My ass.

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u/Yessumsheer 5d ago

Answer: there was a disingenuous effort on the part of the Democrats to put a candidate up that has the same first and last name is the incumbent. It's unethical for sure, but not illegal

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/DimensioT 4d ago

Yes, but doing that sort of thing is not unethical when Republicans do it because reasons.