Alaska is still counting. As of the latest posted results, Democrat Mary Peltola led Dan Sullivan by 637 votes, 102,962 to 102,325. About a quarter of the ballots were still outstanding, and Alaska's ranked-choice count starts November 18.
President Trump doesn't want to wait for any of that.
"The vote totals for the Fake Dan Sullivan, plus the other 'slug' that the Dems put on the Ballot, should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan, and the Election is over - He easily wins. There is no other fair solution!" Trump wrote on Thursday.
Read that again. The president of the United States said votes people cast for one candidate should be taken and given to another, and that the election should then end.
That is not how Alaska counts votes
Alaska already has a way to move votes between candidates, and voters approved it. Under ranked choice, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and those ballots go to whichever candidate each voter ranked next.
The key word is voter. A ballot moves only where that person chose to send it. If someone who picked Dan J. Sullivan ranked the senator second, the senator gets that vote on November 18. If they ranked Peltola second, she gets it. If they ranked nobody, it goes nowhere.
Trump's version throws out the voter's choice. It moves every vote to one man, whatever the voter marked.
The senator's campaign says it doesn't even need that. In a memo to reporters, it claimed that "if the ranked choice voting tabulation took place today of the votes that we have in hand right now, Senator Dan Sullivan would defeat Mary Peltola." Peltola's team called that explanation "fictitious," and said the tens of thousands of ballots still out will extend her lead.
So there is a legal count, with a date, and it hasn't happened. Both campaigns say they'll win it.
What Sullivan's campaign is saying
We could not find a statement from Sullivan rejecting Trump's demand. What his campaign has done is accuse the other side of cheating. Its memo says he is in his position "despite the biggest election cheating scandal in the history of Alaska."
That refers to the second Dan Sullivan, a Petersburg man who appeared on the ballot as "Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr." and had 3,600 votes in the latest count. Fair is fair: there is a real story there. A New York Times report said people around Peltola's campaign helped recruit him. It cited Elisa Rios, a former Peltola campaign manager who had been fired. Mediaite noted that before the story ran, she told the paper she wanted to retract her statements. Peltola's campaign denies involvement. The Justice Department has opened investigations, and Axios reported it has sent target letters to Democratic operatives.
None of that makes Trump's demand legal. If someone broke the law, the answer is a court, not giving one candidate the votes of the people who chose somebody else.
And the courts have already had a look at part of this. The Trump administration sued to stop Alaska from certifying the race if Sullivan lost and would have won with the votes cast for his namesake. A federal judge dismissed that bid, and the department has appealed. Before the election, House Oversight Chairman James Comer said there was a "big possibility" Peltola wouldn't be seated even if Alaskans elected her.
The pattern is hard to miss. First came the lawsuit to block the result. Then a threat not to seat the winner. Now comes the demand to skip the count.
In summary
With about a quarter of Alaska's ballots still out and Dan Sullivan trailing Mary Peltola by 637 votes, Trump demanded that the votes of two other candidates be "immediately given" to Sullivan and the election declared over. Alaska's law moves a vote only to the candidate that voter ranked next, and that count begins November 18. Sullivan's campaign has called the second Sullivan's candidacy the "biggest election cheating scandal in the history of Alaska." We found no statement from him rejecting Trump's demand.
Source
Trump: Sen. Sullivan should get votes cast for Alaska's other Sullivan — Axios
