# United States v. State of Alaska On **October 22, 2026**, twelve days before the midterm election, the [[Department of Justice]] filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska asking a federal judge to **stop the state from certifying its U.S. Senate result if the Democrat wins it**. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge [[Sharon Gleason]]. It is, as far as this site can establish, the first time the federal government has gone to court before an election to pre-emptively block the certification of a Senate race contingent on which candidate wins. ## What the suit asks for The named defendant is the [[Alaska Division of Elections]]. The United States asks the court to bar the Division from certifying the Senate election if [[Mary Peltola]] is the winner, and to hold certification open until an investigation determines how many voters were confused by the ballot. If the incumbent [[Dan Sullivan]] wins, the suit asks for nothing. That conditional structure is the whole case, and it is the part everyone from the state's own lawyers to outside election-law scholars has fixed on: the remedy sought depends not on any defect in how the votes were counted but on **which candidate the count produces**. ## The ballot fact underneath it Two men named Dan Sullivan are on Alaska's November ballot. - **[[Dan Sullivan]]** — the two-term Republican incumbent, listed with his party. - **Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.** — a Petersburg retiree, listed on the ballot as "Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr." with **no party affiliation**. He took roughly **2 percent** of the vote in the August nonpartisan primary and advanced to the general under Alaska's top-four system. The Division of Elections itself tried to remove him in June, finding that his candidacy existed "for the purpose of confusing or misleading voters." An Anchorage Superior Court judge overturned that decision, and on **June 29, 2026** the **Alaska Supreme Court upheld** the trial court, leaving him on the ballot. The state did not seek U.S. Supreme Court review. So the confusion the Justice Department now says requires federal intervention is a condition **Alaska's own courts examined and declined to remedy four months earlier**, in a proceeding the state lost and accepted. ## The legal theory The suit's federal hook is the **[[National Voter Registration Act]]** — specifically its preamble, which states that one purpose of the law is "to protect the integrity of the electoral process." The complaint characterizes Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.'s candidacy as frivolous and intended to benefit Peltola. The State of Alaska's response, filed the week of the election, argues the NVRA governs **voter registration**, not ballot counting or certification, and that the statute supplies no authority for what the United States is asking. The state also argues that an inquiry into which Sullivan individual voters meant to pick would require breaching the secret ballot, and that the ballot design already distinguishes the two men — one carries a party label, the other does not. Under ranked-choice voting, it notes, a voter uncertain between them can rank both. ## Who filed it, and who says he ordered it The complaint was signed by **[[Stanley Woodward]]**, the Associate Attorney General — the third-ranking official at Main Justice. Attorney General **[[Todd Blanche]]** publicly defended the filing on October 25. **[[Donald Trump]] said publicly that he had personally ordered the suit.** That is unusual enough to be the second finding on this page: the ordinary convention is that a president does not direct the Justice Department to open a specific case, still less one whose outcome turns on a Senate seat his party is defending. Here the direction was not leaked or inferred — it was announced. ## Where it stands Judge Gleason granted an **expedited briefing schedule**. Motions to dismiss have been filed by the State of Alaska, by [[Mary Peltola]], and by nonprofit democracy-watchdog groups; the Democratic Party also moved to intervene. A ruling was expected in the closing days of October, before polls open. > [!warning] Live case > This page records the filing, the theory and the posture as of October 27, 2026. The ruling on the motions to dismiss had not landed when it was written, and the certification question only becomes operative if [[Mary Peltola]] wins. Check the docket before citing an outcome. ## Why it matters Three things make this more than one state's ballot curiosity. 1. **The condition is the candidate.** A certification challenge that triggers only on one result is not a dispute about counting. It converts the certification step — the mechanical act that turns a count into a seat — into a point of federal leverage. 2. **It is the third federal election action of October 2026,** alongside [[DOJ California Noncitizen Ballot Litigation 2026]] and the field operations recorded at [[ICE Voter Records Collection]]. Separately each is a lawsuit or an investigation; together they describe a federal government intervening in the administration of a midterm election in multiple states at once. 3. **The Senate decides who it seats.** Certification is the state's step, but the Senate judges its own members' qualifications. A state result left uncertified by federal injunction arrives in a chamber that must then decide whether to seat anyone at all — which is where a ballot-design question becomes a question about the composition of Congress. ## See Also - [[AK-Sen-2026]] — the race itself, its money and its ranked-choice mechanics - [[Mary Peltola]] · [[Dan Sullivan]] · [[Sharon Gleason]] · [[Stanley Woodward]] · [[Todd Blanche]] - [[Alaska Division of Elections]] - [[DOJ California Noncitizen Ballot Litigation 2026]] — the parallel October suit - [[ICE Voter Records Collection]] — the investigative track - [[Election Certification]] · [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] - [[National Voter Registration Act]] - [[Election Interference]] · [[Voter Suppression]]