Trump Demands Alaska Give Sen. Sullivan the 8,446 Votes Cast for Two Other Candidates, and He Trails by 637

Trump wrote on Truth Social last Thursday that the votes for Alaska’s “Fake Dan Sullivan,” plus the other “slug” he says Democrats put on the ballot, “should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan,” and added, “There is no other fair solution!” Here is what is established, and what the ballots say.

• The count. 215,906 ballots are counted, unchanged since November 4. Democrat Mary Peltola has 102,962 (48.02 percent) and Sen. Dan Sullivan has 102,325 (47.72 percent), a 637-vote gap, per Alaska’s News Source. Republican Gerald Heikes has 4,846 and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., the Petersburg man who shares the senator’s name, has 3,600.
• Trump’s proposal, added up. 3,600 plus 4,846 is 8,446 votes, 13.3 times the margin. Give them all to Sullivan and he leads by 7,809, and the race is over by decree.
• What is uncounted. About 51,000 early and absentee ballots are in hand and untallied. Domestic mail ballots can arrive through November 13 and overseas ballots through November 18, and if nobody has a majority, ranked-choice tabulation starts November 18.
• What the post lacks. A statute. The reporting on it describes no legal mechanism for reassigning ballots, and under ranked-choice rules an eliminated candidate’s ballots move to each voter’s next choice, not to the candidate the president names.

The Voters Trump Wants to Reassign Mostly Named Peltola Next

The Alaska Beacon ran the state’s cast vote record through the open-source RCTab tool on November 4. Of 3,426 votes for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. in that file, 991 ranked Peltola next and 560 ranked the senator, which led the Beacon to conclude there was little, if any, voter confusion between the two Sullivans. Newsweek’s estimate on the ballots counted so far has the same shape, about 1,040 to Peltola and 590 to the senator. A New York Times review of the ballot data, as summarized by Democracy Docket, found Peltola was the second choice of the majority of his voters. So the ballots Trump wants to hand the senator are, by their own rankings, ballots that preferred his opponent.

That is not the whole picture, and the rest favors Sullivan. Heikes’ voters lean heavily to the senator, and the Beacon’s early file showed him gaining 2,728 votes from the two eliminations against 1,868 for Peltola, a net 860 against her 626-vote lead at the time. Newsweek’s estimate, after every round on the ballots counted so far, has the senator ahead by about 333. The Beacon’s file left out about 11,000 ballots from rural precincts that favor Peltola and every uncounted early and absentee ballot, and Peltola has won about 56.5 percent of the early and absentee first choices counted so far. The race is open, and 51,000 ballots will decide it, not a Truth Social post.

The Recruitment Story Is Real, and It Does Not Change the Math

The New York Times reported on October 28 that Peltola campaign aides worked with a Democratic operative to find a candidate named Dan Sullivan, and Axios’s summary of the Times report says a staffer was told to search the state for every Dan Sullivan and found a retired teacher who had registered as a Republican shortly before filing. The Alaskans for Mary campaign says it has “no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.” Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered an investigation, and a federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s suit over certification, a ruling now on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

If the Times account holds, finding a man with the senator’s name to dilute his vote is a trick we would condemn from either party, and the state investigation is the right place for it. A trick on the way in does not entitle anyone to rewrite what 3,600 people marked on their ballots. It is a tidy theory of democracy all the same: when the voters’ choices are inconvenient, reassign them.