Attorney General Todd Blanche said on social media over the weekend that the Department of Justice does not seek “to stop the certification of Alaska’s election.”

That statement is tough to square with the lawsuit the DOJ filed days earlier against Alaska’s election officials, as the department seeks to intervene there and in California amid GOP fears of losing congressional control in next week’s midterm elections.

The federal government’s Alaska complaint stems from its concern that Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan could lose a close race to Democratic challenger Mary Peltola due to the presence of a candidate on the ballot named Daniel J. Sullivan, who the DOJ said is running “with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him.”

But even if that claim about the other Sullivan’s intention is true, the legal question is: What can a federal court do for the federal government about it?

In the part of its complaint in which the DOJ makes its case for having legal standing to bring the suit, it said that its asserted legal injuries would be solved by a court order “declaring a certification of an election result prejudiced by Daniel J. Sullivan’s inclusion on the ballot unlawful and enjoining defendants [Alaska officials] from allowing such a certification to occur.”

Putting the merits of the DOJ’s argument aside — election law experts have deemed it incredibly weak — its complaint expresses an interest, contra Blanche’s post, in stopping the certification of Alaska’s election. To “enjoin” something is to stop it from happening. At least, according to the complaint, the DOJ wants to halt Alaska’s certification if the result is “prejudiced” by the other Sullivan’s inclusion on the ballot, At least, according to the complaint, the DOJ wants to halt Alaska’s certification if the result is “prejudiced” by the other Sullivan’s inclusion on the ballot — a claim that would be difficult to demonstrate in a timely manner, if ever.

Furthermore, in the complaint’s “prayer for relief,” which is the standard section where a plaintiff tells a court what it wants, the DOJ lists two specific things.

First, it asks the court to: “Declare that certification of any result that may be impacted by voter confusion, as defined above, would violate Defendants’ duties under the NVRA [National Voter Registration Act] to ‘protect the integrity of the electoral process.’”

Second, it asks the court: “Defendants from certifying any result that may be impacted by voter confusion, as defined above, pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan and any further procedures or relief this Court deems necessary and appropriate to determine what the result would have been absent Daniel J. Sullivan’s inclusion on the ballot.”

That second request for relief reads as if it is missing a word at the beginning. If so, then based on the rest of the complaint, the word “Enjoin” would seem to fit well. As in: Enjoin defendants from certifying … (I asked the DOJ press office whether a word is missing there, and if so, what that word is, but I did not immediately hear back.)

Whatever’s happening with that line, the government’s opponents are reading the complaint as seeking to block certification. Peltola’s campaign committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which are attempting to join in the case to get it dismissed, said in a Sunday filing that the “DOJ seeks an unprecedented order precluding certification of the U.S. Senate election if the candidate the President favors loses narrowly.”

Calling the government’s claims “utterly without legal basis,” they said the Alaska district court “should not allow this lawsuit to hang like the Sword of Damocles over the ongoing election, lending false legitimacy to the President’s and the Attorney General’s ongoing efforts to spread false narratives about Alaska’s elections as voting continues and as results begin to be tabulated next week.”

The post Blanche says the DOJ doesn’t want to block Alaska’s election. The DOJ’s lawsuit says otherwise. appeared first on MS NOW.

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