The Justice Department is asking federal courts to hold up the result of an election that has not happened yet. On Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the department’s lawsuit to block Alaska from certifying its U.S. Senate results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses. He called CNN “crazy” for suggesting it could lead to a repeat of Jan. 6.
It is the second time in about two weeks that the department has moved to freeze ballots before voters finish casting them. The Civil Rights Division exists largely to enforce the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 because states were blocking Black citizens from voting. Now the department is the party asking courts to pause the count.
Alaska: two Dan Sullivans on the ballot
The suit turns on a candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., who had never run for office and asked to appear on the ballot as “Dan Sullivan” after switching parties. Alaska’s elections director removed him in June, concluding he had entered the race to mislead voters. An Alaska trial court reversed that, and the Alaska Supreme Court upheld the reversal.
The department now argues that ranked-choice voting could magnify the confusion. It asks the court to stop certification “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.” The challenge applies if the incumbent loses to Democrat Mary Peltola by fewer votes than his namesake receives.
President Donald Trump told reporters he ordered the filing: “I’m the one that said, ‘do it.'” The department’s own line is that “it is not DOJ’s intention to, and it’s never our intention to, improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process.”
Election law scholars are not persuaded. Derek Muller of Notre Dame called the legal argument “so absurdly thin” with “essentially no likelihood of success.” Glenn Wright of the University of Alaska Southeast said “the ballots are super, super, super clear about who the incumbent Dan Sullivan is.”
California: a list of 20,000 names
On Oct. 14, the department’s acting deputy attorney general, Trent McCotter, sent California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who is Black, and the Los Angeles County registrar a list of about 20,000 people it called “likely noncitizens.” It gave them 48 hours to check the names and to set aside mail ballots from anyone whose citizenship could not be verified. If they could not, it wrote, “the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.”
Weber replied that she had “serious doubts about the reliability of your data and accuracy of your claims.” The state did not meet the deadline, and the department has since asked a judge to block the ballots. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Saturday that the department acted at Trump’s direction and called it “politicizing and weaponizing the law.” He has noted that 28 people have been charged with noncitizen voting in a state of 23 million registered voters.
Wrongful challenges to a voter’s eligibility have a long record in Black communities, from poll taxes to purge lists. A ballot set aside until a voter proves who they are is a ballot that may not be counted in time.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
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