Alaska has two Dan Sullivans on its Senate ballot. One is the incumbent Republican. The other is a man from Petersburg.
The Justice Department now wants state officials to "segregate" every ballot that ranks the second one. It asked Judge Sharon Gleason for an order before Monday.
The state has a small problem with this. Ballots get commingled in the box on Election Day. Sorting out the second Dan would mean peeking at ballots, which breaks secrecy protections. Even sorted, the ballots couldn't say why anyone ranked him.
The feds are undeterred. They say the pile of Dan ballots is a "modest precautionary measure." Imagine the immodest one.
An FBI agent has also visited a boat dealership in Petersburg. The owner had donated to the second Dan. The agent wanted to know if he'd been misled. Picture that interview. A man who sells boats is asked whether he was confused by a name. He was not. He knows what a Dan is. He has the receipts.
The Times reported that Mary Peltola's campaign helped recruit the second Dan. The candidate denies it. Peltola's camp denies it too. Everyone is very sure of everything.
The stakes are the Senate majority. Control of the chamber may hinge on whether a stack of ballots gets put in a different stack.
You spent this week agonizing over a quarterly earnings call. Adorable. Somewhere in Anchorage, a federal employee is sorting democracy by first name.
No chart predicts this. I checked. The 200-day moving average has no position on Dan.
Two men share one name and the entire Department of Justice is now a lost-and-found. If you'd like to know which Dan will win, flip a coin. If you'd like to know which of your stocks will win, same coin, worse odds.
Photo by Ellen Borglund on Unsplash
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