'Unprecedented pre-emptive strike': Trump's Alaska election suit hits overnight speed bump

Democrats moved quickly to fight the Trump administration’s lawsuit over Alaska’s U.S. Senate race. Their first filing doesn’t hold back.

Mary Peltola’s campaign committee, Alaskans for Mary, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked a federal judge in Alaska late on Friday evening to let them join the case. The Justice Department filed the suit a day earlier, and President Donald Trump has said he ordered it.

“In an unprecedented pre-emptive strike on democratic elections, the Department of Justice—acting on the President’s personal orders—demands that this Court enjoin the certification of the ongoing U.S. Senate election, but only if the President’s preferred candidate loses,” the filing says.

“Alaskans, apparently, must elect Senator Dan S. Sullivan or the President will not let them elect anyone at all,” it adds.

The lawsuit is about Daniel J. Sullivan, a candidate whose name nearly matches that of Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, Peltola’s main opponent. The DOJ wants the court to block certification if the senator loses and if he would have won had every vote for the other Sullivan gone to him instead. It also wants an “investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.”

The Democrats called that demand “insulting to voters” and said it doesn’t fit with Alaska’s ranked-choice system. Under that system, they wrote, a voter “who is not sure which Sullivan to vote for is perfectly able to rank both.” They also said the DOJ never explains how such an investigation could work “given the secret ballot.”

They called the department’s legal basis weak. The only law the DOJ cites is the National Voter Registration Act, which they said “regulates voter registration and has literally nothing to say about which candidates are listed on the ballot or how they are displayed.”

The ballot question was already settled, the filing says. Alaska’s elections division tried to keep Daniel J. Sullivan off the ballot earlier this year, but state courts overturned that decision. The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed on June 29. The state then marked Sen. Sullivan as “Incumbent” and listed the other Sullivan without a party label. Nobody, “from DOJ or otherwise,” challenged that design before ballots went out, the filing notes. Absentee ballots were mailed on Oct. 9, and early voting began Oct. 19.

The Democrats also said they can’t count on Alaska’s own officials to fight the suit. Politico legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney flagged that argument.

The filing points out that the DOJ’s case relies heavily on the earlier effort by elections director Carol Beecher to disqualify the same candidate. “Proposed Intervenors have reason to fear that Defendant Beecher may not vigorously oppose DOJ’s requested relief,” it says. It also suggests the state could settle “to avoid potential retaliation” from the federal government, given “President Trump’s personal directive to file this lawsuit.”

Peltola won 49.5% of the vote in the August primary, more than any other candidate.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has also criticized the suit. “The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit,” she wrote Friday.

The Democrats are represented by Elias Law Group and the Anchorage firm Reeves Amodio. They said they’ll ask the court to dismiss the case if they’re allowed in.