If Mary Peltola wins Alaska’s Senate race on Tuesday, she still has to get to Washington. There are five places to stand in her way. Each one can slow her down. None has yet established a legal basis to deny her the seat.
The count
Alaska counts absentee ballots for weeks. The ranked-choice tabulation is set for around November 18, and certification for November 25. Sullivan, or any ten voters, can demand a recount. A recount checks the arithmetic. It can’t tell which voters meant to pick the other Dan Sullivan. And as I wrote in Two Dan Sullivans: Are Alaskan Voters Being Tricked?, anyone in Alaska not living in a cave already knows which one is the senator.
The courts
The Justice Department has already sued to block certification if the senator loses and would have won had the other Sullivan’s votes gone to him. That assumes every vote for the other Sullivan was a mistake. Some Alaskans fed up with both parties will pick him as a joke or a protest, and nobody can say which votes are which. Federal Judge Sharon Gleason has sounded skeptical, noting the suit came after Alaskans had started voting. Even Alaska’s own Republican-run election officials told the court DOJ has no business intervening. And what law was broken? The Alaska Supreme Court itself put Dan J. Sullivan on the ballot in June. Lawyers can buy time. They can’t buy a seat.
The governor
This is the one nobody is watching. Under federal law, the governor signs a senator-elect’s certificate of election. It’s normally a formality, and no Alaska governor is known to have refused after the state certified a winner. Gov. Mike Dunleavy won’t commit, saying he won’t “send a scam to Washington.”
But Dunleavy has a clock problem. He’s term-limited and leaves office in early December, about two weeks after certification. Stall past that and his successor signs, unless a lawsuit gives everyone a reason to wait.
Minnesota shows how long that can take. In 2008 Al Franken’s certificate was held up while Norm Coleman’s lawsuit ran its course, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed it only after the state Supreme Court ruled. Franken was seated eight months after the election, but he was seated.
The investigations
DOJ subpoenas, the governor’s own probe and a House Oversight inquiry. None of them has to find anything to matter. They supply the excuse for every other step.
The Senate
The Constitution makes each chamber the judge of its own members’ elections, and no court can overrule it. The power is real. After a disputed 1974 New Hampshire race, the Senate deadlocked for months, then declared the seat vacant and sent it back to the voters. In the late 1920s it refused to seat two Republican winners over corrupt campaign money: Frank Smith of Illinois, 61 to 23, and William Vare of Pennsylvania, 58 to 22. Those weren’t party-line votes. But the usual practice when a seat is challenged is to swear the member in and let a committee review it.
And it takes a majority. If Alaska decides who controls the Senate, the temptation will be enormous.
Watch what they do, not what they say
Trump has refused to rule out keeping Peltola out. But for a year he has demanded Senate Republicans kill the filibuster, first during last fall’s shutdown and again this year to pass the SAVE America Act. John Thune kept saying the votes to kill the filibuster weren’t there, and his senators backed him. Refusing to seat a winner over a dirty trick would be a far bigger break with precedent.
Senators protect the rules they’ll need when they’re in the minority. And they know same-name tricks aren’t a Democratic invention. Florida’s 2020 ghost candidates were a Republican operation, and in Washington’s 2024 governor’s race a conservative activist recruited two extra Bob Fergusons, who dropped out before the primary. Punish Peltola for this, and the next Democratic majority has a weapon. It’s a slippery slope: today a dirty trick, tomorrow a misleading campaign ad.
What’s more likely is delay. Last year Speaker Mike Johnson kept Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva waiting seven weeks to be sworn in, and it only took one man to do it. Expect hearings, subpoenas and speeches.
Stalling is easy. Refusing a seat takes votes Republicans don’t have.
If you want to talk about voters being deceived, a same-name candidate is small potatoes next to a promise to lower your grocery bill.
And if the Senate refused to seat everyone who made campaign promises they won’t or can’t keep, it could hold its sessions in a phone booth.