State Unleashes Subpoenas Over Alaska Ballot Squabble

The Justice Department has issued at least three dozen new subpoenas and document preservation requests in its investigation into the Alaska Senate race, with President Donald Trump pushing his administration to intensify its probes. The paper went to the campaign offices of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and to those of Dan J. Sullivan. A retired teacher with no previous political experience now has federal investigators sorting through his records.

Who Has the Power

The sequence moves fast once the top of the pyramid gets interested. A New York Times investigation published Wednesday found that members of the Peltola campaign recruited Daniel J. Sullivan to run as a means of siphoning votes from Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan through voter confusion. The Times relied on text messages, emails and an interview with a former Peltola campaign staffer. On Thursday, Alaska's Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced he was ordering a criminal investigation into Peltola's campaign, and the Justice Department reportedly issued subpoenas for a criminal investigation. The DOJ had already opened its own criminal investigation in July, about three months back. And on Oct. 23, seven days before today, it filed a civil lawsuit arguing Alaska should not certify the Senate results if Sen. Sullivan loses by less than the margin of votes that went to Daniel J. Sullivan.

That lawsuit came at Trump's order. He told the department to try to block the state from certifying its own election results. The race, along with a handful of others, will decide which party controls the Senate for the remainder of Trump's term. That's what the apparatus is fighting over: control of the machine, not the people inside it.

What They're Calling "Order"

The legal case looks thin, and the experts say so. No federal law overriding Alaska's role in administering elections was cited, and the part of state law the DOJ says was violated is its preamble, which isn't legally binding. Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, put it plainly: the Times story "makes the Democrats look bad, but on the [DOJ lawsuit] it doesn't make any difference." Scott Kendall, an Alaska attorney who has worked in Republican politics, said: "There's no law on the books that's violated by this conduct. Something can be really, really lousy ... without being criminal conduct."

Walter Olson of the Cato Institute warned that giving courts or officials "robust power to strike a candidate for confusion or for bad motive is a power that is likely to be overused or misused." He added: "All of those things are fine to report on and voters can decide for themselves."

The state tried it anyway. A few weeks after Daniel J. Sullivan filed, the Division of Elections rejected his filing as not "an actual good-faith candidacy," but one "filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead." He appealed, and in June the Alaska Supreme Court ruled the state had to include his name on the ballot. Alaska law requires only that a candidate be a U.S. citizen, an Alaska resident and over 18. The ballot now reads "Sullivan, Daniel S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent" and "Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr." with no party affiliation.

The Election Trap

And the voter? Trump, Friday morning, in an interview with Kansas City talk radio host Pete Mundo, had a theory about that: "Most people don't know in Alaska, and a lot of other states too, what does incumbent mean? They don't know what incumbent means." He said you need a "190 IQ to figure out the ballot," called the situation "a total fraud," and compared it to the 2020 presidential election, again falsely claiming it was rigged.

Here's the show in full. Both parties' machinery stands accused of gaming the ballot, a Republican governor and a Republican-aligned Justice Department are suddenly zealous about election integrity, and the ones accused deny everything. Peltola's campaign denies involvement. The Senate Democrats' campaign arm denies any involvement. Daniel J. Sullivan maintains he entered the race on his own accord. The former Peltola campaign manager, fired in August, gave on-the-record comments to the Times and then sought to retract them. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who endorsed Sen. Sullivan but supported Peltola in a previous campaign, wrote that "ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process."

Alaska voters will also decide next week whether to repeal ranked choice voting and open, top-four primaries. A similar repeal effort failed by less than 800 votes in 2024. Even the rules of the game are up for a vote, while prosecutors and campaigns fight over who gets to play.

At 4 p.m. ET Friday, U.S. Attorney Michael J. Heyman and FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew Schlegel were set to hold a press conference in Anchorage. It wasn't clear what they would discuss. The controversy raises the possibility of a civil or criminal case against the Peltola campaign less than a week before Election Day, along with a potentially protracted legal dispute after Nov. 3.