Donald Trump is trying to block a legitimate election even before votes are cast and counted. He has ordered his weaponized Department of Justice to sue Alaska to stop the state from certifying its U.S. Senate election if Trump’s candidate loses:
Earlier this year, Alaska’s state government fought hard to prevent Dan J. Sullivan, a fishing enthusiast and former teacher from the state’s temperate southeast, from running against incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan.
Those efforts failed in June when the Alaska Supreme Court protected the fisherman’s candidacy, affirming a lower court decision.
But on Thursday, the federal government sued Alaska and its Division of Elections director Carol Beecher, potentially putting the final results of the race in question by arguing that “voter confusion” could cost the incumbent his seat in a contest against Democrat Mary Peltola.
…“The sole purpose of [Dan J. Sullivan’s] candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan,” the federal government, represented by the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska, wrote in the complaint.
…The scenario federal attorneys describe as an “election result that may be impacted by voter confusion” would occur if Senator Sullivan lost the election to former congresswoman Peltola, but would have won if all votes for Dan J. Sullivan went to the incumbent instead.
Arguing that such an outcome would violate the National Voter Registration Act, the Trump administration is asking U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason to prevent defendants from “certifying any result that may be impacted by voter confusion … pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan” [Kayvon Bumpus, “Trump Sues to Block Alaska Senate Race Results If Republican Loses,” Courthouse News Service, 2026.10.22].
If the lack of merit of this lawsuit is not immediately obvious, come back with me to 2016 and consider a hypothetical Suppose I had gone to court before the election and asked a judge to block certification of South Dakota’s statewide vote if fake Amendment U passed or legitimate Initiated Measure 21 failed. Suppose I had argued that any outcome other than No on U and Yes on 21 would demonstrate that voters were confused by the competing payday lending caps.
Or suppose (a less perfect analogy to the Alaska case) Dennis Daugaard (who voted the way I wanted on the 2016 payday lending initiatives) had gone to court before the 2016 election to block certification of Initiated Measure 22 if it passed. Suppose he had argued to the judge what he argued to the Legislature and the people after IM 22 passed, that the only way the Anti-Corruption Act could pass was if the voters were “hoodwinked” by deceptive ads.
Both challenges would have been laughed out of court. Both challenges would have required a judge to overturn an election based on assumptions that are legally unresolvable:
- Anyone who votes contrary to the desires of the plaintiff is misinformed.
- Any ballot cast by an uninformed voter is invalid.
It’s fun to think that people who disagree with us just haven’t heard the full story. But in court, we have to produce real evidence. How do we prove and quantify “misinformation” to a judge? Are we really going to round up thousands of voters and get them all to swear under oath that they lacked vital information when they cast their votes and that given what they’ve been told since then (probably by the plaintiff’s lawyers) they would vote differently if they had the chance?
And how do we prove that people voted a certain way in the first place? We don’t put names on ballots; we have no documentation to show that any of those “misinformed” voters the plaintiff might bring forth actually voted one way or the other. The defense has no way to disprove the claims of those voters… other than maybe to allege that if the voters in question have testified to their own lack of keen attention to electoral matters, they may not even reliably remember which way they voted.
No judge would have ruled in favor of any such lawsuit against certification of South Dakota’s ballot measure votes, because no judge could find any legal justification for doing the plaintiffs’ campaign work for them. If a citizen (blogger Governor, President) can see the potential for confusion to arise over issues on the ballot, it’s the citizen’s duty to educate his neighbors and make his case before the election. If voters don’t hear or heed that citizen’s argument, the citizen doesn’t get to go to court and throw out the voters’ decision in favor of the citizen’s losing argument. The proper remedy for a failing political argument is not judicial intervention after the vote; it’s more free speech and better campaigning before the vote.
A judge certainly cannot deem voters too dumb to have their votes count. If you’re a properly registered resident of the jurisdiction holding an election, your vote counts, whether you hold a Ph.D. or failed high school, whether you read Dakota Free Press every day or watch nothing but puppy videos on YouTube and mark ovals on your ballot randomly. A judge has no legal basis on which to invalidate any vote based on the voter’s state of mind at the ballot box.
Just as it would have been ridiculous for me or Dennis Daugaard or anyone else to sue to throw out the public vote on any ballot measure that contradicted our personal wishes, it is ridiculous and dangerous for Donald Trump to wage lawfare from the White House to nullify votes for anyone but his preferred U.S. Senate candidate. Even that preferred candidate appears to recognize what’s wrong with Trump’s lawsuit:
Nate Adams, a spokesperson for Sen. Sullivan’s campaign, expressed confidence in his reelection but said by text Friday “we’ll let the DOJ complaint run its course.”
Adams said Alaska voters “are smart enough to figure out the difference” between the two Sullivans. He also said Sen. Sullivan had no prior knowledge of the lawsuit [Eric Stone and Liz Ruskin, “Alaskans, Legal Experts Condemn Federal Lawsuit as Attempt to Invalidate the Vote in U.S. Senate Race,” Alaska Public Media, 2026.10.23].
Trump’s attempt to say Alaska’s vote only counts if his Senator wins is patently wrong in multiple ways. If you want to win an election, get out and make your case. If voters don’t vote your way, you don’t get to rip up their ballots. You accept the will of the voters… and prepare to make a better case at the next election.