Candidate at center of DOJ’s Alaska lawsuit drew fewer votes than another long-shot Republican

Before Tuesday, President Donald Trump and the GOP were warning frantically that the presence on Alaska’s ballot of a U.S. Senate candidate with a similar name to that of the GOP incumbent would confuse voters. Trump’s Department of Justice filed a lawsuit* seeking to prevent certification over the issue. 

But as of Wednesday afternoon, that candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan, had received less than 2% of the vote — fewer votes than an obscure third Republican candidate who received almost no national attention.

The initial results underscore how the voter confusion issue that the administration has called an urgent threat to election integrity appears to have had little actual impact.

With Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan separated by just hundreds of votes, Alaska’s closely watched Senate race remains undecided, and the potential impact of Daniel J. Sullivan has yet to be determined.

Peltola led the incumbent by just 626 votes, 102,701 to 102,075, according to unofficial results with approximately 74% of ballots counted.

Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher, had received just 3,583 first-choice votes, or approximately 1.7%.

Gerald Heikes, another Republican candidate in the race, had received 4,821 votes, or 2.3%.

The figures offer the first concrete picture of how voters responded to the presence of two candidates sharing the same first and last names. Daniel J. Sullivan attracted a relatively small share of first-choice votes.

For now, Daniel J. Sullivan’s 1.7% vote share remains larger than the margin separating the two leading candidates. But it’s much less than the 2.9 percentage point margin by which the New York Times currently projects Peltola will win the race.

For months, Trump and his allies accused Democrats of orchestrating a scheme to confuse voters and siphon support from the Republican incumbent. Trump personally directed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to intervene in the race, leading to an unprecedented lawsuit seeking to prevent Alaska from certifying the election under certain circumstances if the incumbent lost.

The administration argued that voters could mistakenly select Daniel J. Sullivan instead of the senator and that the state should investigate whether those ballots reflected voters’ actual preferences.

But the state’s ballot clearly distinguished the two candidates, identifying Dan S. Sullivan as the Republican incumbent and listing Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. separately, without a party designation.

Alaska also uses ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to rank multiple candidates in order of preference. That means a voter who mistakenly marked the second Sullivan first could still have ranked the incumbent next, allowing the ballot to transfer to the senator when the namesake candidate is eliminated.

The preliminary vote totals do not establish whether voters were confused or how those ballots will ultimately transfer.

On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed DOJ’s lawsuit, finding that the administration had failed to demonstrate how a court-ordered investigation into voters’ intentions could proceed without violating Alaska’s secret-ballot protections.

Gleason said the government offered “no workable plan” for segregating ballots and investigating voters’ intentions while preserving ballot secrecy.

“These requests certainly involve the time, place, and manner of Alaska’s election, which are the responsibilities of the State, not the executive branch of the federal government,” she wrote.

DOJ appealed the dismissal, leaving its legal challenge pending as the state continues counting ballots.

Neither Peltola nor the incumbent has secured a majority of first-choice votes. Alaska is continuing to count eligible absentee and other outstanding ballots, with official ranked-choice tabulation scheduled for November 18 if no candidate wins outright.

Until that process is complete, the ultimate impact of Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy remains uncertain. What the initial results do show is that, despite the extraordinary political and legal attention surrounding his candidacy, fewer than two in every 100 voters counted so far selected him as their first choice.

*The Elias Law Group (ELG) represents the Peltola campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in this case. ELG Firm Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.