President Trump on Saturday declared the Alaska Senate race “over” and said Sen. Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, had already won, even though thousands of ballots remain to be counted and Democrat Mary Peltola has held a narrow lead in the unofficial first-choice tally.
“Daniel Sullivan is leading substantially in the Alaska Senatorial Race. When you add Daniel (3,600, 1.68%) into Dan, and Gerald Heikes (4,846, 2.27%), Senator Dan Sullivan is up by thousands of Votes. Remember, Heikes was also fraudulently put into the Race,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the New York Post reported.
“I don’t know what takes so long to announce his win. This should be immediate,” he wrote. “Anyone voting for Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr., a man who tried to change his middle initial, but was unable to get it done in time, and who was otherwise nonpolitical – Never even voted – is a vote for Senator Dan Sullivan. The Alaska Race is OVER. Dan Sullivan WON, BY A LOT!”
The count that is still open
When Trump posted, about 74 percent of precincts had reported, the Post said, and Peltola had been leading by fewer than 700 votes. Alaska allows 10 days from Election Day for ballots to arrive, and 15 days for overseas ballots. The state uses ranked-choice voting, so if no one finishes above 50 percent of first-choice votes, ballots for last-place candidates move to those voters’ next choices.
That is why the President is adding the 3,600 votes for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and the 4,846 votes for Gerald Heikes as if they already belong to the senator. Ranked-choice rules do not assign those ballots automatically. Those voters named their own second choices, and those choices have not yet been applied.
On Thursday, Trump had written that “the vote totals for the Fake Dan Sullivan, plus the other ‘slug’ that the Dems put on the Ballot, should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan, and the Election is over.” He has urged the Justice Department to investigate what he calls a Democratic ploy.
The decoy on the ballot
Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a little-known independent, appeared on the ballot with a name almost identical to the incumbent’s. The New York Times, cited by the Post, earlier reported that Peltola’s allies recruited the decoy Sullivan to run. Trump has called the decoy a Democratic ploy to draw votes from the senator.
Putting a second Dan Sullivan on an Alaska Senate ballot is not a harmless quirk. If allies of the Democratic candidate recruited a namesake to confuse voters, that is a scheme, and it deserves a full investigation.
Both campaigns are still waiting on the remaining ballots, and no winner is certified.
The bottom line
A Senate seat should not turn on whether a voter can tell two almost identical names apart. The President is right to treat the decoy candidacy as an abuse and to demand that investigators follow it. He is also asking that votes be reassigned before ranked-choice counting is finished, and Alaska’s law is not written that way.
Election officials should finish the count and apply the ranked-choice rules in public. The Justice Department should examine how Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. got on the ballot and who helped him. Alaskans who meant to re-elect their senator should not lose that seat to a paperwork trick. The lawful answer is to expose the scheme and count the ballots.