Alaska Governor Gives ‘Decoy Dan’ Probe Update Amid Tight Senate Race

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy announced on Sunday that state investigators are probing potential wrongdoing in connection to Dan Sullivan's disputed candidacy in the state's tight Senate race. The Republican governor discussed the investigation in an interview with WABC radio's The Cats Roundtable, as reported by Fox News. At present, Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by 2,517 votes, nearly a week after poll closures.

The individual under scrutiny for potential wrongdoing is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg, who received 1.7 percent of the vote as of Monday afternoon. Given his share, he leads by 3,651 votes, surpassing the current margin.

Sullivan has denied coordinating with Peltola's campaign. The investigations, alongside a federal lawsuit and the ongoing race, have heightened tensions over Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, which Dunleavy described as "very confusing" in the same interview. Voters are in the process of deciding, for the second time within two years, whether to repeal the system through Ballot Measure 2.

The state's investigation stemmed from a New York Times report in late October that alleged connections between individuals linked to Peltola's campaign and national Democrats working to recruit Daniel J. Sullivan. Peltola's campaign has denied involvement in his recruitment. Federal prosecutors are independently conducting an inquiry, and the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to prevent the certification of a Peltola victory if votes for him could have altered the result.

While it remains unclear if recruiting Daniel J. Sullivan would breach any criminal law, the Justice Department's lawsuit is considered "entirely meritless" by Michael Morley, a law professor from Florida State University, as it is based on the premise that votes for one candidate were intended for another. Alaska’s election system complicates this scenario, as no candidate is expected to secure a majority, necessitating a ranked-choice tabulation on November 18.

Under the current standings, if no candidate reaches 50 percent, the first candidate to be eliminated is Daniel J. Sullivan. When his ballots are redistributed, they would likely go to the next preference indicated by voters.

Scott Kendall, the architect of the 2020 ranked-choice voting system, stated that ranked-choice voting neutralizes the effects of schemes and "spoiler candidates." According to him, a voter who is uncertain about the two candidates could rank them both, and the ballot would ultimately count for the senator. However, Repeal Now, the group promoting Ballot Measure 2, does not share Kendall's confidence.

They have heard from voters who believed they had selected the wrong Dan Sullivan and others who did not rank either candidate, only later realizing their ballots might not count in the final round.

The state's own records indicate that in the 2022 U.S. Senate race, 499 ballots were overvoted out of approximately 266,800 counted, and in the 2024 U.S. House race, 572 out of about 335,900 were overvoted. Both rates were under 0.2 percent. A larger share of ballots were discarded before the final round, with about 3.4 percent in the 2022 Senate race and 2.3 percent in the 2024 House race.

These data do not support the claim that voters are confused by the election system. The No on 2 campaign, opposing Ballot Measure 2, countered that ballot spoilage rates remain as low as they were under the previous system. Kendall dismissed Dunleavy's characterization of the count as "slow," emphasizing that the mail system and geography in Alaska contribute to the slower processing time. He termed the count as "nearly instantaneous."