WASHINGTON — The US Justice Department has sued to preemptively block Alaska from certifying the results of its US Senate race if the Republican incumbent loses, an extraordinary federal intervention in the November 3 midterm elections that could decide control of the upper chamber. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Anchorage, argues that a second candidate on the ballot named Dan Sullivan could so confuse voters that any narrow loss by Sen. Dan S. Sullivan should not be certified without a federal investigation.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he personally ordered the legal action. “I'm the one that said do it,” he told reporters, after days of complaints that the ballot listing was “totally confusing.” The suit represents the latest and most aggressive step yet in the Trump administration's campaign to insert itself into the administration of elections, an area the Constitution leaves almost entirely to the states.

The two Dan Sullivans

At the center of the case is an almost farcical coincidence of names. The incumbent, Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, has held his seat since 2015 and is running a closely contested race against Democrat Mary Peltola, the former US representative. But the ballot also carries a third contender, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg who first registered as a Republican, advanced through Alaska's top-four primary, and then changed his registration to unaffiliated between the primary and the general election.

The Justice Department's complaint — United States v. Alaska, No. 3:26-cv-00376 — alleges that Daniel J. Sullivan is running 'with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him' and that 'the sole purpose of his candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign.' It notes that the challenger's campaign website 'uses a format, color scheme and overall theme similar to the public website for Senator Sullivan's campaign.' For his part, Daniel J. Sullivan has said he chose to run on his own, the Associated Press reported.

This is not the first legal fight over the challenger's candidacy. In June, Alaska elections director Carol Beecher determined that Daniel J. Sullivan had not declared a 'good-faith candidacy' but had instead 'filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead' voters. The Alaska Supreme Court allowed him to remain on the ballot pending a full opinion, which has yet to be released.

What the DOJ is asking the court to do

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to block certification of any outcome 'that may be impacted by voter confusion,' so there can be 'an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.' In other words, if the incumbent loses but would have won had every vote for the second Sullivan gone to him, the DOJ wants the court to stop Alaska from finalizing that result until a federal probe untangles voter intent.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency is taking 'necessary steps to ensure that this frivolous candidacy does not undermine the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters.' Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters, 'It is not DOJ's intention to and it's never our intention to improperly interfere with elections.'

The complaint names the state, elections director Beecher, and the state's election and ballot-review boards. Its only legal claim rests on the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, a statute mostly concerned with registering voters and keeping voter rolls accurate. The department cites one of the law's stated purposes, 'to protect the integrity of the electoral process,' and asks the court to hold off certification pending an investigation.

Election law specialists say the legal theory behind the suit is shaky. 'The statute simply doesn't let the Department of Justice enjoin certification,' Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, told the Associated Press, describing the theory as 'strange and unusual.' It is also unclear, he said, how a court could practically intervene in the way the department proposes — reconstructing the intent of voters who marked a different candidate's name is not something election law has a mechanism for.

The case runs up against the Constitution's division of power: states run their own elections, and the executive branch has only a minimal role in administering them. That tension has defined much of the Trump administration's recent election activity. Federal officials have been pressing states for voter-registration data and arguing that stricter measures are needed to ensure public confidence in the vote. Critics, including Democratic and some Republican election officials, have described those moves as federal overreach — a pattern this lawsuit extends dramatically. The DOJ has also recently stepped up enforcement actions tied to elections, as we reported in our coverage of federal voter-fraud charges in California, even as foreign-influence questions swirl around the midterms, including the recent US embassy's accusation that Canada is seeking to influence the 2026 vote.

Why Alaska matters so much

Control of the US Senate could come down to Alaska. Democrats need to net four seats in November to win the chamber, and the Sullivan–Peltola race is one of several Republican-held contests Democrats hope to flip. There has been little reliable polling, but both parties are treating the race as competitive — and with ranked-choice voting, the presence of a second Sullivan on the ballot adds genuine strategic confusion to an already unusual system.

Alaska adopted ranked-choice voting for its top-four primary finishers in the general election: voters rank candidates, and the lowest finishers are eliminated with their votes redistributed until someone has a majority. The DOJ argued in its filing that some of the senator's supporters 'likely will inadvertently vote for Daniel J. Sullivan,' while others 'likely will be confused as to how to rank the three Republican candidates as to defeat Peltola.' In a race that could be decided by hundreds of votes, that confusion is not theoretical — it could be decisive. President Trump's legal exposure in other arenas has only heightened the stakes of political battles this month, from his ordered deposition in the $10 billion BBC lawsuit to his administration's ongoing court fights over tariffs and election rules.

What happens next

The case now sits before the US District Court for the District of Alaska, which must decide whether to grant the extraordinary relief the DOJ seeks — essentially a court order telling a state not to certify a democratic election until federal officials have reviewed voters' intentions. No date has been set for a hearing, and election administrators in Alaska have not yet publicly responded to the filing.

Even if the judge declines to block certification, the lawsuit's existence is itself the story: a sitting administration, eleven days before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, asking a federal court to hold a Senate result in limbo because of a name on the ballot. Whether courts accept that theory or reject it, the Alaska fight has become the clearest test yet of how far the federal government will go in contesting elections it might lose — trending per news coverage from Reuters, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press as one of the defining clashes of the 2026 midterms.