Alaska lawyers say Trump’s ‘baseless’ demand to overturn Senate votes ‘not even possible’

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska’s Republican state government on Saturday urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed at President Donald Trump’s request to block certification of a possible Democratic victory in the state’s crucial U.S. Senate race, writing that there is “no reason for this Court to hear this baseless lawsuit any longer.”

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The scathing filing from the state attorney general’s office comes as U.S. District Court Judge Sharon L. Gleason set a Saturday deadline for arguments on whether she should dismiss the lawsuit without even a hearing. The U.S. Justice Department’s complaint was sharply criticized by election law experts and demands that the judge suspend certification of a possible victory by Democrat Mary Peltola until it is determined whether voters were confused by the presence on the ballot of a second candidate with the same name as her main rival, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan.

The Justice Department added a request Friday that the judge separate all ballots showing votes for runner-up Dan Sullivan until it can be determined whether voters were misled and wasted their votes on a spoiler candidate. In its Saturday filing, Alaska said this was “both concerning and impossible.” He added that there would be no way to do this without violating voters’ privacy.

Trump also called for Peltola to be prosecuted after The New York Times reported this week that internal texts and messages appeared to show the Democratic campaign was involved in putting the second Sullivan, a retired professor from the isolated fishing village of Petersburg, on the ballot. But the state filing indicates that the two Sullivans are distinguishable from each other on the ballot: The senator is listed as a Republican and an incumbent, while the other simply as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.”

“State officials carefully designed the ballot to minimize voter confusion,” Alaska officials wrote. “The Court should immediately dismiss this lawsuit with prejudice and allow state officials to conduct the general election – including the counting and certification of votes – without undue federal interference.”

The Trump administration argued that a preamble to the 1990s law governing voter registration gave it responsibility for ensuring that states maintain the “integrity” of federal elections. He said he was simply trying to combat fraud by preventing the Democrat from being declared the winner of a race that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

The Justice Department issued a wave of subpoenas and announced it was conducting a criminal investigation into the matter, as the administration stepped up its use of its legal powers to support Trump’s camp in the midterm elections.

Peltola denied any involvement in the second Sullivan’s presence on the ballot. The Times report was based on interviews with his former campaign manager, texts and contributions from a political group supporting Peltola to a foreign Democratic consultant who recruited the second Sullivan.

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Alaska’s Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who announced a state investigation into the situation after the Times article, condemned the second Sullivan’s inclusion on the ballot. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled this summer that the second candidate met all legal requirements to stay. The state government’s filing Saturday says the new revelations about Peltola’s possible campaign role do not change the fact that he is legally on the ballot.

“Not all wrongs can be righted in federal court,” the state wrote.

Peltola’s campaign and voting rights groups also urged Gleason to dismiss the case, putting them in unusual alignment with Alaska state officials.

“Imagine if the federal executive branch could extract a few words like ‘election integrity’ from a statutory preamble and, on that basis alone, bend the machinery of national elections to its will, preemptively blocking a U.S. Senate election to protect its preferred candidate from defeat, then subjecting voters to an investigation by law enforcement into who they ‘really’ supported,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a filing seeking dismissal of the pursuit. “Imagine this world and ask yourself if this is what the Creators intended or precisely what they feared most.”