What's going on with Dan Sullivan and Dan Sullivan? The Alaska Senate litigation, explained

President Donald Trump’s administration has taken its first step to block the results of a midterm election, and it’s all about the fact that there are two Dan Sullivans on the Alaska Senate ballot.

One of them is a Republican and ally of the president. The other is a retired school teacher whom Republicans accuse of being a Democratic plant to siphon away votes.

Trump said Friday that he directed the Justice Department to file its lawsuit.

What is going on? Here's an explanation:

The campaign is likely to be decided by only a few thousand votes, and it could determine which party controls the Senate. So the stakes are high, and Republicans worry that voters will get confused and accidentally vote for the wrong Sullivan.

That's why Republicans have been trying to get the second Dan Sullivan — hereafter known as Daniel J. Sullivan — thrown off the ballot for months. The lawsuit went all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court, but Republicans lost.

Republicans think the presence of Daniel J. Sullivan is a Democratic dirty trick. But Daniel J. Sullivan, who lives in the tiny fishing community of Petersburg, says he is running of his own accord.

Alaskan voters will see “Dan S. Sullivan” identified as a “registered Republican” and “incumbent" on their ballots, while “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” will not have a party affiliation. Former Rep. Mary Peltola is the Democratic candidate.

So the Trump administration is filing in federal court to try to block certification of the election if its Dan Sullivan — the senator — loses.

“Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan," the lawsuit said, “the State and its officers will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election.”

Trump said of the lawsuit: “I’m the one who said do it."

The lawsuit is essentially a placeholder and only becomes an issue after Election Day if the incumbent loses.

Even if that happens, legal experts say it has no chance of success. The suit cites a clause in the preamble to the National Voter Registration Act that says states must “protect the integrity” of elections. It says that gives federal courts grounds to overturn elections which, under the U.S. Constitution, are entirely state affairs. But that vague turn of phrase probably isn't enough for any judge to try to overrule the will of the voters, experts say.

Technically, the lawsuit only asks the court to block certification until an investigation determines whether enough voters were fooled by the two Sullivans to have swung the election. It doesn't explain how that would happen, which seems like a big issue given that votes are supposed to be confidential.

Dirty tricks and voter confusion are nothing new in American politics. In Ohio's Senate race, Republicans have been tied to an effort to boost a socialist on the ballot who would pull votes from the Democratic candidate challenging Sen. Jon Husted.

What is new is that the Justice Department is trying to block an election result. Trump wanted the department to help him try to overturn his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020, but career attorneys stopped it. Now most of those career attorneys have been forced out and replaced by Trump loyalists.

The top Justice Department official who signed onto the lawsuit, Stanley Woodward, had previously served as a defense attorney for those prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

There's been widespread concern that Trump will try to nullify the voters' will in November, which Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked about in Virginia on Thursday. He said he didn't want to rule out intervening in some sort of “doomsday” scenario but that “it is not DOJ’s intention to, and it’s never our intention to, improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process."

Hours later the department filed its lawsuit over Alaska's certification process.