Alaska Governor Orders Investigation Into Senate Ballot Name-Matching Effort

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered an investigation Wednesday into how a second candidate named Dan J. Sullivan ended up on the state's four-way U.S. Senate ballot alongside incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. The governor said a New York Times report supplied new evidence of an organized effort to recruit candidates intended to confuse voters and misdirect their votes.

Dunleavy assigned the inquiry to the Alaska Department of Public Safety. The agency will examine whether the effort broke Alaska law and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted. "The evidence will determine what happens next," Dunleavy said. The Alaska Division of Elections reviewed similar concerns in June, and Dunleavy said the new reporting substantially supported that division's findings.

The Times report relied on 12 sources, along with text messages and documents. Those materials allegedly showed members of Mary Peltola's campaign, lawyers for Peltola, and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee contributed to pushing Dan J. Sullivan, a Republican on Alaska's four-way ballot, to run. The report said the effort to find a spoiler candidate who could siphon votes from Sen. Sullivan and benefit Peltola was internally called the ballot composition project.

Alaskans for Mary, Peltola's campaign committee, said through a spokesperson Wednesday that it "has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign." The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said it was "not involved with Dan J. Sullivan." A DSCC spokesperson wrote that "Republicans have a long history of recruiting and propping up candidates in an attempt to boost their own campaigns."

Dunleavy said anyone or any organization found to have broken the law "must be held accountable." He also said, "Alaskans have a fundamental right to vote for the candidate they actually intend to support." He added, "Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections."