A political analyst spotted a disturbing scheme tucked away in the Department of Justice's lawsuit seeking to preemptively halt the certification of the state's Senate election.
Last week, President Donald Trump's DOJ asked a federal court to halt the certification if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan does not win. The DOJ's argument rests on the fact that another candidate named Dan Sullivan is also on the ballot. In the lawsuit, the DOJ asked the court to transfer votes from one Dan Sullivan to another if the wrong one wins, claiming that it would be evidence that voters were confused.
There is just one problem, according to David Pakman, host of the liberal "David Pakman Show" on YouTube. An Alaskan court has already ruled that both Sullivans can be on the same ballot.
But Pakman couldn't pass over the part where the DOJ asked the court to transfer votes from one candidate to another. He discussed the ask during a new episode of his podcast Monday.
"Trump's not even pretending that this was something that the Justice Department under [Attorney General] Todd Blanche came up with independently, which would be bad enough," Pakman said, noting that Alaska's use of ranked-choice voting would complicate the matter.
The proposed mechanism also raised a deeper question, Pakman said.
"How are they supposed to determine which voters were confused?" he asked. "Ballots are secret. You can't assume that everyone who voted for Daniel Sullivan intended to vote for the Republican incumbent."
It also points to a bigger problem, according to Pakman.
"This is an administration that has tried to obtain voter information from states, impose a bunch of new voting restrictions, a post office scheme, and now they have a Justice Department lawsuit ... every single one of these cases or issues and we don't know where they're going to land," he said. "We have an Executive headed by Trump that believes it can go and intervene in elections run by the states."