Alaska election officials ask judge to dismiss DOJ's Senate suit by Nov. 2

Alaska's election officials asked a federal judge Monday to dismiss the Justice Department's lawsuit over the state's U.S. Senate race "immediately, with prejudice," and to rule by Nov. 2, the day before Election Day.

The officials, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, the state's election boards and its ballot counting review board, are among the defendants the department sued. "The United States lacks authority to intervene in state elections at all, much less in support of a favored candidate," their lawyers at the state Department of Law wrote in the motion. Dismissal with prejudice would keep the department from refiling.

In a separate request, they asked U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason to have the department respond by 5 pm Wednesday, saying the suit and the relief it seeks "cast a cloud over Alaska's election." Assistant Attorney General Margaret Paton Walsh said in a sworn statement that she sought the department's agreement to that schedule, left a voicemail for Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and had not heard back when she filed.

Gleason's order earlier Monday covered only requests by Mary Peltola's campaign and voter groups to join the case and seek its dismissal. She intends to rule on those by 5 pm Wednesday.

The department sued Oct. 22, asking the court to bar certification if Sen. Dan Sullivan loses but would have won had every vote for Daniel J. Sullivan, the other Sullivan on the ballot, gone to him, pending an investigation into those voters' intent. It argues that Daniel J. Sullivan's presence on the ballot "threatens to mislead" the senator's supporters.

The state officials call the National Voter Registration Act, the law the suit rests on, "a voter registration law" that "has no relevance to the two-Sullivan issue," and say Congress has passed no law on similar names or voter confusion. "The United States is asking this Court to create and apply rules that Congress never enacted," they wrote.

The motion says the ballot tells the two men apart with their different middle initials, the "Jr." after Daniel J. Sullivan's name, "Dan" for the senator and "Daniel" for the other man, the senator's "longstanding Republican affiliation" but not Daniel J. Sullivan's "newfound" one, and the word "Incumbent" beside the senator's name.

Citing the department's own complaint, the motion notes that the senator got 41.4% of the primary vote and Daniel J. Sullivan 2.5%, which it says suggests voters "had no trouble identifying the senator."

The investigation the department wants would require matching ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan to the voters who cast them so they "could later be interrogated about their intent," the officials wrote, violating the secrecy of the ballot that Alaska protects by law.