You’ve probably read about this already. In the Alaska Senate race, there are two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. One is the “real” Dan Sullivan, the other is some random schmuck who got recruited, hoping that Republican voters would be confused and split the vote for the real one. Peltola (the Democrat) denied it, but the New York Times got the evidence. They sure did do it.
Trump and the rest of the party went ballistic, calling it an affront to democracy. He (DOJ) filed a lawsuit that essentially says that if this trick works (the right Dan Sullivan loses because the other one gets enough votes to make the difference, but more complicated because Alaska uses ranked-choice voting), the result needs to be overturned and everyone investigated.
Let’s start here: Trump is right on the merits. What Peltola and the Dems did is terrible. It’s wrong. It is an affront to democracy. This tactic undermines the expressed will of the voters. Peltola and the party should be ashamed.
Tradition
Variants of this are done all the time. It is a time-honored tradition to promote candidates to try and split the vote. Trump himself rose to power largely because other candidates thought he would siphon votes from the other candidate(s), which would help them. None of this is new. Doing a bad thing more effectively is even more bad, but only marginally.
Law
This is legal. It’s gross, but it’s legal. Essentially, the Alaska Supreme Court found there are no laws against it.
While it’s clear that the second Dan Sullivan is not acting in good faith, the courts don’t rule on the motives of a candidate – it doesn’t matter if he’s a bad faith candidate. They could only direct the Division of Elections to clearly distinguish the two candidates (which they did).
Trump and the GOP have no real legal case. The Constitution clearly lays authority with Alaska, and Alaska has ruled on it. Game over.
Hypocrisy
I said Trump and the GOP are right on this issue. They are. But it’s precious to suddenly find them fighting for democracy. Consider:
- In 2000, a poorly designed ballot led to a few thousand extra Florida votes going to Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. As it so happened the margin of victory for Bush was only 537 votes in Florida. George Bush was seated as President. You didn’t find the GOP arguing that it was clear what the voters meant, instead they sent literal mobs of lawyers to threaten election workers. The presidency was given to the wrong person. (That was when I, and much of the country, lost faith in The Supreme Court.)
- Gerrymandering is an affront to democracy. Congress refuses to make any laws about it, so The Supreme Court has correctly said that gerrymandering is just dandy (unless it can be proven that the KKK made it or something). Twisting districts for nakedly partisan reasons is perfectly allowed. This has much larger impact than some vote splitting in one Senate race. Efforts to stop gerrymandering are prominently from the Democrats.
- Trump and the GOP broke with our democratic history to redistrict red states mid-decade for nakedly partisan advantage. And the Democrats have responded in kind, gerrymandering their states to even the scales. It is legaland it’s far worse than the Alaska vote splitting.
All these are legal. Selective vote purging and ID laws, blocking Merrick Garland nomination, floating third Trump term loopholes, and using alternate electors to blatantly steal the election… the list keeps going. They are all direct affronts to the core principles of Democracy. It always seems to be the GOP leveraging legal ploys to fight the will of the voters. It’s chutzpah for them to complain the Democrats did something scummy but legal. They started it.