Fourteen states weighed in on whether an Alaskan belonged on Alaska's ballot

When the Alaska Supreme Court took up whether a man from Petersburg could appear on the primary ballot for U.S. Senate under his own name, the state of Iowa and 13 other states filed a brief arguing he should not.

They were not alone. The Alaska Republican Party filed on the same side, as did the Honest Elections Project, a national organization that litigates election administration cases. All of them backed the Division of Elections and its authority to keep Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. off the ballot on the grounds that his candidacy would confuse voters, given that he shares a name and, at the time, a party with the incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan.

Filing on Sullivan's side were two Alaskans, Dustin Darden and Thomas A. Lamb, both representing themselves.

That was the shape of the case: multistate legal weight and national organizational money on one side of a question about one Alaska ballot line, and two self-represented residents on the other.

The court accepted five amicus briefs in two days, part of a schedule compressed to fit the printer. Sullivan appealed to the superior court June 22; a judge heard argument June 25 and ruled the next day; the Division appealed that afternoon; briefs were filed June 27 and 28; and the Supreme Court heard 30 minutes a side by video on June 29 and issued its order that morning. One justice recused.

The court sided with Sullivan, sending back to the Division only the narrower question of how to distinguish the two men on the ballot. The Division has since printed and mailed absentee ballots listing both. Its full opinion explaining the reasoning has not yet been published.