Pro-voting groups blast DOJ overreach in Alaska Senate race lawsuit

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) demand that Alaska set aside ballots cast for an alleged spoiler candidate in the U.S. Senate race far outstrips the power Congress has given the executive branch, pro-voting groups told a federal court.

Alaska’s election board has asked a district court judge to toss out the DOJ’s lawsuit, arguing the Trump administration has no power to interfere with how the state runs its elections. 

In a court filing, the Alaska election board said the DOJ had not identified a single law or court case authorizing it to dictate how states manage elections. 

“A political scandal does not support a federal claim without a viable federal law basis,” the election board said.

The lawsuit, which President Donald Trump boasted he personally ordered, represents yet another attempt by the administration to usurp states’ constitutional authority over elections.

The DOJ has claimed the presence of Daniel J. Sullivan on the ballot is meant to deliberately fool voters who intend to vote for the Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan. The DOJ claims the confusion could constitute a violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

But the Alaska election board said the NVRA addresses voter registration, not voter fraud. And that does not empower the Trump administration to demand that Alaska set aside ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan.

“Nor does the United States address the major questions doctrine or explain how its federal-authority elephant could possibly fit into its NVRA mousehole,” Alaska argued, echoing a line from the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in Whitman v. American Trucking.

The League of Women Voters of Alaska and other pro-voting groups made a similar argument in support of Alaska’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“If Congress had intended for a few words from the ‘Findings and Purposes’ section of a 1993 voter registration statute to give the federal executive imperial oversight over all matters of election integrity in the States, how are we all only learning about it now? Of course it did not, and that ends this case,” they said.