Republicans just got wiped out across the country. So Donald Trump has a new idea for the one Senate seat he might still save: take other people’s votes and give them to his guy. In a Truth Social post, Trump demanded that ballots cast for two other candidates in Alaska be handed to trailing Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, and the election declared over. That is not how voting works anywhere in America.
The Post
On Thursday, Trump wrote that the votes for the “Fake Dan Sullivan,” plus a second candidate he called a slug the Democrats put on the ballot, should be handed straight to the real Sullivan. Then he declared the race over. “There is no other fair solution!”
There is another fair solution. It’s called counting the ballots. Alaska is still doing exactly that, and the count isn’t done.
The Republican president wasn’t asking for a recount or an audit. He was asking election officials to ignore what thousands of Alaskans actually marked on their ballots.
The Count
Democrat Mary Peltola leads Sullivan by just 637 first-choice votes, 102,962 to 102,325, in the latest preliminary results. Tens of thousands of early, absentee and rural ballots are still waiting to be counted.
Rural precincts have strongly favored Peltola, who is Yup’ik from Western Alaska. A New York Times analysis of the state’s ranked choice data found she is likely to keep her lead.
Peltola’s campaign says the outstanding ballots will extend her margin. Sullivan’s campaign claims its own math shows him winning, but that analysis left out more than 10,000 rural votes.
The “Slug”
The “slug” Trump was talking about is Gerald Heikes, a perennial candidate from Palmer. He is running in third with 4,846 votes. He is also a Republican.
The New York Times reported Heikes agreed to run after a visit from a Midwest political operative. Heikes himself wasn’t thrilled to learn the president called him a slug. He told the Anchorage Daily News Trump “obviously has been an ignorant fool on this.”
The “Fake Dan Sullivan” is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg, in fourth with 3,600 votes. A state judge put him back on the ballot after Republican-run election officials tried to remove him.
What Alaska Law Says
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting. If nobody tops 50 percent, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots go to each voter’s next choice. That repeats until someone wins. Tabulation starts Nov. 18.
So Heikes and the other Sullivan’s voters already have a say in who wins. Their second choices will count. Trump wants to skip that and award every one of those ballots to Sullivan, no matter who those voters ranked next.
University of Washington law professor Jeff Feldman, who has litigated extensively in Alaska, told Newsweek there is no legal mechanism to do that. “Alaska law is crystal clear,” he said.
He Already Tried This in Court
This isn’t just a rant. Before Election Day, Trump’s Justice Department filed an unusual preemptive lawsuit asking that Alaska not certify the result if Sullivan lost by fewer votes than the other Sullivan received.
A federal judge in Alaska threw the case out. DOJ appealed, but the Ninth Circuit’s schedule doesn’t even take the state’s arguments until Jan. 11, long after the Nov. 25 certification and the Jan. 3 swearing-in.
Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, one of several people who got a DOJ target letter this week according to the AP, put it bluntly: Trump is now demanding on social media what his DOJ already lost in court.
What They Say
Sullivan and Trump call the second Dan Sullivan part of a Democratic plot. Sullivan’s campaign calls it the “biggest election cheating scandal in the history of Alaska.” Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered a criminal investigation after a New York Times report that operatives aligned with Peltola helped recruit spoiler candidates.
No one has been charged. Legal experts cited by the Anchorage Daily News say the reported conduct doesn’t appear unlawful, and officials haven’t said what law was broken.
Peltola denies any role. “I am not interested in tricking voters,” she said in October.
The Bottom Line
Voters just handed Republicans a historic beating, and Trump’s answer is to hand himself the votes. Ballots belong to the people who cast them, not to the president’s favorite senator. Count every vote in Alaska, and let the result stand, whoever wins.
Sources: Anchorage Daily News (Alex DeMarban), Alaska’s News Source (KTUU), Newsweek (Steve Mollman), Axios, FactCheck.org (Robert Farley).