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Snippets

Alaskan Folly.

Four people are on the Alaskan ballot for Senator. Two are named Dan Sullivan. One is the Republican incumbent, and the other is virtually unknown. According to a New York Times article, the “other” Dan Sullivan was recruited by supporters of Democratic nominee Mary Peltola (but not by Peltola herself) to confuse voters. Republicans are voicing outrage. I am surprised by the outcry. Did anyone think that the “other” Dan Sullivan was on the ballot for any reason other than to be some sort of spoiler?

The Alaskan tactic is just another version of what both parties have done many times. One party, for example, has sometimes given aid and support to an extreme candidate in the other party’s primary, thinking that the extreme candidate will be easier to beat in the general election. Sometimes a party has aided a third party thinking that the third-party candidate will siphon votes from the major-party opponent. Reports, for example, said that Republicans helped the Green Party’s Jill Stein to get on the ballot in some states.

However, the story of two Dan Sullivans reminds me of a similar shenanigan in a different context. A Broadway play produced by David Merrick, Subways Are for Sleeping, got uniformly poor reviews from the New York critics. Merrick sought out people with the same names as the critics, such as Howard Taubman and Walter Kerr. He invited them to a performance and elicited blurbs from them such as “One of the few great musical comedies of the last twenty years,” and “A fabulous musical. I loved it.” Merrick placed the quotes along with pictures of the namesakes (Who knew what the actual critics looked like?) in a newspaper ad saying seven out of seven loved Subways. The flop play ran for almost another six months.

Yodeling

I watched a few minutes of a TV travel show about the Alps. It showed street performers in a touristy town. There was yodeling. That evening while getting ready for bed, an NPR segment featured yodeling. I had now heard yodeling twice in a day! I used to hear it more because a lot of country singers once yodeled. I thought I remembered that even my favorite of the singing cowboys, Roy Rogers, occasionally yodeled. The next day I went to YouTube and was pleased to find that some of my memories were still correct and that Roy Rogers did indeed yodel. (It does not seem right just to call him Rogers, but it would be ok to just say “Roy.”) As often happens with YouTube, that led me to other clips, and I heard more yodelers. I realized that during each of these yodeling encounters, I smiled while listening to the minute or two of the distinctive vocalizations. A whole hour of yodeling might be bad for one’s mental health, but a few minutes can make you feel lighthearted. Perhaps in these troubled times we all ought to take a break each day to listen to some yodeling. I, therefore, considered it good news when I was told that a new Broadway show about the life of Dolly Parton will have yodeling.

A Tribute?

Sir Patrick Stewart, the marvelous actor, just died. I will always remember him as Macbeth in a production of the Shakespeare play that took my breath away. I guess that many more will know him as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Whenever I watched that show, I marveled that even far into the future, humans had not learned how to grow hair. Perhaps as a tribute to Stewart, I should finally shave my head.

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An Alaskan Lawsuit about Two Dan Sullivans

In a highly unusual move, the Trump administration asked a federal court to block certification of the Senate election in Alaska if the Republican incumbent loses.

The Justice Department argued that confusion over another candidate on the ballot with a name very similar to the incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, could taint the election result. Mr. Sullivan is in a close race against Mary Peltola, a Democrat, but the ballot also features another Daniel Sullivan, but this one is Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.

The lawsuit argues, “There is a realistic chance that, even if a majority of Alaskans wish to vote for Senator Sullivan, Daniel J. Sullivan’s presence on the ballot will result in a victory for Peltola.”

To guard against voter confusion, the suit contends, Alaska should “not certify any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion.” The possibility of such confusion exists, the suit continued, if “(1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska’s rank-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election.” The vote should not be certified until “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.” It is unclear how such an investigation would work since ballots are cast anonymously.

I read the complaint several times and still do not understand the legal basis for the claim. The Constitution gives the states and Congress oversight over elections. As far as state oversight goes, this issue has already been litigated in Alaska. Its state Supreme Court affirmed in June of 2026 that both Sullivans could be on the ballot. Congress has not acted on the issue. This means that neither entity designated by the Constitution to oversee the election has found this to be significant enough to affect the election. In fact, the ballot takes care to avoid the confusion by explicitly listing Senator Sullivan as the Republican incumbent and listing the other Sullivan without a party affiliation.

Alaska will use ranked-choice voting. Ranked-choice voting will only come into play if no candidate receives an initial outright majority. If neither Peltola nor the incumbent has a majority on the first-place ballots, only then does ranked-choice come into play. At that point the candidate with the lowest vote total is dropped, and the second choices on those ballots are reallocated to that second choice. (See post of October 14 for an explanation of ranked-choice voting.) If the voters for the “fake” Sullivan list the incumbent as their second choice, then the Senator will be reelected.

Part of the reason for ranked-choice voting is to prevent a candidate from winning with a plurality when most of the voters were actually voting against the plurality winner.

With national ranked-choice voting, Trump may not be president. In 2016, he won crucial swing states not with majorities but with pluralities. In those states third- and fourth-party candidates received enough votes to deprive both Trump and Clinton of majorities. If these voters had the opportunities to list second choices, Clinton may have won. For whatever the reason, many voters who did not vote for Trump did not vote for Hillary Clinton either. They voted for third party candidates instead, and in key states those votes for Libertarians or Greens gave Trump pluralities and the decisive electoral votes.

In the swing state of Pennsylvania in 2016, for example, Trump won the state with the plurality of 48.8 percent (Clinton got 47.6 percent). Trump and Clinton together garnered 96.4 percent of the total ballots, while in 2012, the major presidential candidates had received 98.8 percent in Pennsylvania. In the intervening four years, third parties nearly trebled their votes from 69,000 to 192,000. A sizeable number of voters apparently wanted to vote for neither Trump nor Clinton, and as a result, Trump won.

A similar scenario played out in Michigan where Trump won in 2016 with only 47.3 percent of the vote. Again “others” made the difference. In 2012, only 1.4 percent of the ballots were not cast for the major parties, while in 2016 that number rose to 5.2 percent for minor parties, with vote totals increasing from 65,000 to 250,000. Trump’s plurality (again not a majority) was a mere 10,000 votes. The move to third parties again allowed him to win a plurality and get all of Michigan’s electoral votes.

And the beat went on. In Wisconsin, Trump won the plurality at 47.9 percent, but again, third parties swung the state. In 2012, third parties got 28,000 votes and 0.9 percent of the total. In 2016, third parties garnered 137,000 votes accounting for 5.4%.

We do not know who those third-party voters disfavored more, Trump or Clinton. Ranked-choice voting tends to answer that by allowing a second-place vote. If the second choices had primarily gone to Clinton, the results might have been different in 2016. Moreover, had Trump not been elected in 2016, I doubt that he would even have been nominated in 2024, much less elected. And even in 2024, although he came close to a nationwide majority, he still got only a plurality with 49.8% of the vote.

Perhaps this explains the Alaskan lawsuit, which Trump proudly proclaimed he ordered.

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Ranked-Choice Voting for Senate: Maine and Alaska

Ranked-choice voting is in effect in the Alaska and Maine Senate races. Both states operate similarly, and in both states, the race is up for grabs. Each voter can rank the candidates in the order they prefer. So, for example, I can say my first choice is A, my second choice is B, and so on.

Here’s how it works: Assume four candidates and 100 voters. If 40 voters had A as their first choice, 35 for B, 15 for C, and 10 for D, no one has the majority required in a ranked-choice election. Another count is undertaken. The candidate with the lowest number of first place votes is dropped, D in this case, and the second-place choices on those ten ballots are reallocated to the candidates who were the second choices. 

Assume that five of the ten ballots where D was the first choice had A as the second choice and five had B as the second choice. That means that both A and B have five more votes, giving A 45 votes and B 40 votes. Still neither has a majority so we have another count. C is dropped and the second choices of the voters for C reallocated. If six or more of those second choices are for A, A has more than 50 votes, a majority, and is elected. If, on the other hand, eleven or more of those fifteen had B as their second choice, then B has the majority and is elected.

Maine is unlikely to be determined by ranked-choice voting in the Senatorial election because ranking choices comes into play only when there are three or more candidates. In Maine, although several people have mounted write-in campaigns, only two candidates are on the ballot.

One is Susan Collins, the only incumbent Republican Senator up for reelection in a state that voted for Kamala Harris. Troy Jackson is the Democratic candidate.

Jackson tries to tie Collins to Trump making it a standard pro-Trump /anti-Trump battle, but there are a couple of local issues, too. Immigration enforcement became a hot-button issue after ICE killed a Colombian immigrant in Maine a few months ago. Collins opposes Trump’s immigration enforcement, but she supported increasing the ICE budget. She asked, “Do you really want to get rid of an agency that deports violent criminals?”

Collins, it is often said, had the deciding vote in favor of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. She stands by her vote. Kavanaugh was instrumental in voting for the Dobbs decision banning abortion. Jackson’s argument is, “Do you trust Collins to pick the next Supreme Court justice?” Jackson, who now supports abortion rights, did not always do so.

Collins touts her Senatorial seniority that has helped bring federal funds to Maine, more than $1.5 billion in recent years, she says. Jackson maintains that she has not leveraged her power wisely and tries to tie Collins to Trump for rising gas and grocery prices. Collins, on the other hand, accuses Jackson, who was a former Maine Senate president, of setting state policies that caused high energy and housing costs.

Finally, in Maine, which has significant trade with Canada, the Canadian tariffs are a flash point. Collins says that she has used her power with Trump to ameliorate the Canadian tariffs. She says that she got the tariff lifted on Canadian rock salt, which is important to Maine. Jackson responds, “You can’t eat rock salt.”

Polls have the Maine Senate race as a dead heat.

Alaska does have four candidates on the Senatorial ballot, but only two real contenders: Dan Sullivan, a Republican, a Harvard grad, a lawyer, a marine, and the current incumbent. He is opposed by Mary Peltola, a Democrat, a native American, a past member of the Alaska House of Representatives, and a one-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives. As elsewhere in the country, affordability, housing, and health care are campaign points. However, there are local issues. Alaska has a special epithet reserved for one’s opponent: To be aligned with the “Lower 48” is a terrible thing. This plays out in many ways. The federal government owns 60% of Alaskan lands, and the state is frequently in conflict with the federal government over drilling rights and roads. So, e.g., Sullivan says Peltola is “aligned with the Lower 48” by opposing expanded oil and gas drilling in the state; she, on the other hand, touts an oil project she supports that environmentalists have opposed.

The Alaska race also has a fierce battle over fisheries management. Fish are central to Alaska’s economy and identity, and fish are at the center of the campaign. Peltola, a Yup’ik Native American, says often she has been fishing since she was 6. Showing the importance of fisheries in Alaska, her campaign slogan is “Fish, Family, Freedom.”

The hot-button issue between the candidates is “bycatch,” the catching of salmon and other nontarget species from huge trawling vessels that harvest pollock and similar fish. Many blame bycatch for declines in salmon, halibut, and crab stocks. Peltola supports a ban on factory trawlers that combine fish harvests with onboard processing and distinguishes large out-of-state operators, mostly based in the state of Washington, from smaller Alaska-based operations.  Sullivan touts a bill he introduced in Congress called the Bycatch Reduction Act. Peltola plays up that the large fishing industry opposes her approach more than Sullivan’s, in essence saying if they are against me, you should be for me.

 The Trump/Doge cuts to fishery science and the National Weather Service have also been at issue. Musk supports Sullivan.

Finally, Alaska sees China as a huge market for its seafood, and tariffs have hurt this. Sullivan has stood with Trump on tariffs.

Peltola leads narrowly in the poll averages, but Alaska is a tossup. In Alaska, ranked choice might matter. Two minor candidates are also on the ballot. One is a Republican, and the other claims no party affiliation. If Peltola were to get the plurality but not the majority and the second choices on the minority candidate’s ballots are heavily for the Republican Sullivan, he could win even though coming in second on the initial count. If, however, Sullivan is leading without a majority on the initial count, but lost because the second choices favored Peltola, I predict that someone will be baselessly contending that Alaska was a stolen election. Trump has already labeled Alaska’s system as “stupid.”

There are several reasons given for ranked choice voting. It is said that it reduces mudslinging; a candidate does not want to alienate an opponent’s supporters, hoping to get second place choices. This deters ad hominem attacks and forces a focus on the issues. Also ranking assures that we don’t elect candidates who are opposed by a majority of the electorate. Sometimes, we elect a candidate with a plurality because there are enough third-party votes to prevent a majority. However, the third-party voters might have preferred the losing candidate to the winning one. In that case, the winner, was actually opposed by a majority. Finally, ranked choice voting eliminates a run-off election, which is costly, and in which turnout is often less than in a regular, general election.

Although ranked-choice voting is used in Alaska, it is not universally loved. It was adopted in 2020 in a statewide referendum with a bare 50.55% of the voters approving. A 2024 attempt to repeal the system was defeated by an even tinier margin with 50.12% voting to retain it. Another attempt to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in November.