USAupdated 1h ago3 min read
Archive photo · 2 June 2025Donald Trump Orders DOJ Probe Into Mary Peltola Aides’ Dan Sullivan Ballot Stacking Scheme
“It was a scheme. It was election fraud.”
“voter confusion is not considered fraud.”
Photo: Daniel Torok, Public domain · Cropped for layout
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Alaska's governor ordered an investigation into an alleged scheme placing a Dan Sullivan on the ballot. Mary Peltola denied knowledge of efforts to recruit a spoiler candidate named Dan Sullivan.
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Two Dan Sullivans
Alaska’s Senate ballot for the next week’s midterm elections features two candidates with the name Dan Sullivan, after a New York Times report said aides to Mary Peltola helped recruit candidates bearing names similar to Republican Senator Sullivan in an apparent bid to manipulate the ballot and siphon votes.
President Donald Trump ordered a Justice Department investigation into alleged voter fraud, and Trump said, “It was a scheme. It was election fraud. Total election fraud,” while Peltola rejected the accusations and said the dispute was distracting from voters’ concerns.
US Attorney Michael Heyman said Democrats had “orchestrated a sprawling conspiracy to recruit and prop up Daniel J Sullivan as a sham candidate,” as the controversy triggered a political firestorm in the United States.
The dispute centered on Daniel J Sullivan Jr, who announced his US Senate candidacy on May 29, three days before Alaska’s June 1 filing deadline, and the strategy described as “ballot stacking” involved recruiting candidates “not necessarily to win, but to influence the distribution of votes.”
Denials, subpoenas, probes
Mary Peltola denied Thursday that she knew anything about an effort to put another candidate on the Alaska ballot with the same name as the Republican incumbent, and she told reporters, “I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent.”
The Justice Department escalated a criminal investigation with new grand jury subpoenas, and an Associated Press account said subpoenas seeking grand jury testimony or documents, along with records preservation demands, were issued after The New York Times reported that Peltola’s campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting Dan J. Sullivan Jr.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered an investigation into whether the state’s Democratic candidate recruited another candidate with the same name as her Republican opponent, and Dunleavy said the newspaper’s reporting “reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections.”
Dan J. Sullivan denied running at Democrats’ behest and said he had no contact with Peltola’s campaign, and he told reporters, “Zero, none, zilch,” after announcing his candidacy in June.
Legal stakes and fallout
The Justice Department also filed a lawsuit seeking to preemptively block certification of the results if the incumbent Sullivan loses, and the NewsNation account described the argument as voter confusion affecting results.
NewsNation said “Simply sharing a name with a candidate is not a violation of the law in many states,” and it added that “voter confusion is not considered fraud,” while also noting that prosecutors would need another crime connected to the candidate such as a violation of campaign finance laws or falsifying residency documents.
In Florida’s 2020 state Senate race, NewsNation said Republican state Sen. Frank Artiles was convicted of excessive campaign contributions and procuring the falsification of a candidate oath form after recruiting Alex Rodriguez to run, and it said the goal was to draw votes away from Democratic incumbent Jose Javier Rodriguez.
The BBC reported that election law experts said it was unlikely to dislodge the second Dan Sullivan from the ballot, and it quoted Justin Levitt saying, “It turns out that convincing somebody to run for office is not a crime, even if their name happens to be the same as an incumbent.”