Judge Dismisses Justice Department Suit Seeking to Delay Alaska Senate Certification

US District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit on 1 November 2026 that sought to prevent Alaska from certifying the results of its US Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan lost. The suit, filed days earlier, asked the court to order the segregation of ballots cast for a second candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan so that investigators could examine whether voter confusion had occurred. Gleason ruled that the federal government lacked standing and that the requested remedy was infeasible.

The Alaska Senate contest pits Sullivan against Democratic former Representative Mary Peltola. A third candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg who changed his registration from Republican to undeclared, also appears on the ranked-choice ballot. The Justice Department argued that the presence of the similarly named candidate warranted an investigation if the incumbent lost. Gleason, an Obama appointee, wrote that the United States provided no workable plan for segregating ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then investigating them while preserving the secrecy of the ballot.

Many ballots had already been cast by the time the suit reached the court. Gleason noted that late changes to election procedures are strongly disfavoured and that the cast ballots had been mixed in a manner that prevented matching them to individual voters. She also cited the Constitution’s allocation of election administration to the states and the Supreme Court’s Purcell principle, which counsels federal courts against altering election rules close to voting. The judge denied leave to amend, concluding that another revision would not cure the jurisdictional and practical defects.

The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit hours after the ruling. Whether the appeal proceeds to a decision before results are certified will depend on the margin in the race. If Sullivan wins, or if Peltola’s margin exceeds the votes received by the third candidate, the practical effect of any further litigation diminishes. Separate criminal investigations into the circumstances surrounding the third candidate’s appearance on the ballot continue at both federal and state levels.

The case forms part of a series of Justice Department actions filed in the final weeks of the 2026 midterm campaign. Voting in the midterms is scheduled for 3 November. Alaska’s ranked-choice system already requires voters to rank candidates; the presence of two Sullivans added a further layer of name similarity that the department sought to address through post-election segregation rather than through pre-election ballot design changes. Gleason’s order closes the civil attempt to delay certification while leaving the underlying investigations open.

Alaska election officials had argued that segregating ballots after they had been cast and mixed would violate voter secrecy and was not operationally possible. The state’s position prevailed on both standing and feasibility grounds. The ruling leaves certification on the normal timetable unless a higher court intervenes before the count is complete. For voters who have already marked ballots, the decision means their choices will be counted under existing state procedures without a court-ordered separation of those who selected the non-incumbent Sullivan.