There are two Daniel Sullivans on the ballot for U.S. Senator in Alaska. One of them is the GOP candidate; the other ran against him in the primary, winning over 4000 votes. The winner garnered over 68,000 votes. Both are on the ballot because of Alaska’s ranked choice voting system. Mary Peltola is the Democratic candidate. Trump is afraid his candidate will lose to Peltola, so he’s sued to prevent that.
No, seriously.
The DOJ has sued to challenge the results if the Republican loses. Again, no, seriously.
[The suit] alleges that the presence of a candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan could confuse voters and wants a court to potentially delay the certification of the election if Sen. Sullivan is defeated next month.
The problem is not the request, which on its face is almost ludicrous (the facts that would have to be shown to justify the remedy requested are, frankly, unimaginable), it’s ludicrous on the legal basis for the request:
The lawsuit points to the preface of a federal law setting guard rails on states’ voter registration procedures – a preface that explains the law’s goals of protecting the “integrity of the electoral process” – as giving the court the power to intervene.
A prelude, like the Preamble to the Constitution, for example, is effectively dicta: commentary on the law that may provide guidance, but has no legal force. Dicta in a judicial opinion is not binding, but it can be an argument picked up later. Preludes to laws are similar; perhaps guidance to interpretation, but not law themselves. IOW, relying on the prelude to a law to make a claim in a civil suit, is the kind of mistake a first year student shouldn’t make in a moot court. If that’s all you’ve got, you really got nothing.
The lawsuit is based on a “strange and unusual” legal theory, said Derek Muller, an election law professor at Notre Dame Law School. It’s also unclear, he said, on a practical level, how a court could even intervene in the way the Justice Department proposes.
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“They’re just plucking from the preface and saying this gives them a free-wheeling right to enjoin operations in a state, and I just don’t think a court is going to buy that,” Muller said.
These are the great legal minds of the DOJ we’re supposed to be afraid of. And all challenges to the electoral outcome, even the Twilight Zone theory that Johnson will conspire to deny the seating of New Democrats, will still go through the courts. The courts still require evidence, and law. Trump’s DOJ seems to be consistently short of both.
