In a rather strange lawsuit — United States v. State of Alaska, filed on October 23 — the US Department of Justice asked a court to block that state’s election authority from certifying an election result that isn’t even known yet and won’t be known until, at the earliest, November 3.

Weird enough, but it gets even weirder: DOJ wants certification of the result blocked if, and only if, incumbent US Senator Dan Sullivan loses the election.  If he wins? Move along, nothing to see here.

The “problem,” DOJ claims, is that voters may be “confused” by the presence of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot — the aforementioned Daniel S. Sullivan, a Republican, and  “independent” Daniel J. Sullivan — in addition to Democrat Mary Peltola and a second Republican, Gerald L. Heikes.

In other words, DOJ wants the court to rule that Alaska’s voters are really, really stupid.

So stupid that they’re incapable of distinguishing Daniel S. Sullivan, who’s clearly marked on the ballot as both a Republican and the incumbent, from Daniel J. Sullivan, who appears with no party designation next to his name.

So stupid that there needs to be a magical new judge-made law forbidding candidates with similar names to run for office lest those stupid, stupid voters get “confused.”

The other part of DOJ’s argument is that Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy is a Democratic Party dirty trick designed to produce exactly the “confusion” in question. So I guess they’re claiming that Democrats think Alaskans are stupid, too.

Three big problems with DOJ’s case: There’s no law against voter stupidity, nor is there any law against similarly named candidates seeking the same office, nor are there any laws against political dirty tricks as such. I’m not a lawyer, but so far as I can tell there’s just no legal basis for the suit. It’s DOJ plaintively whining “give us what we want, because we want it.”

A fourth problem is that the problem isn’t a problem: Alaska uses ranked-choice voting.

Instead of voting for one, and only one, candidate, Alaskans “rank” the candidates in order of preference. If your first choice gets the fewest votes, your vote moves to your second choice in a second (theoretically instant) round of vote-counting. If THAT candidate gets the fewest votes, your vote moves to your third choice. This goes on until one candidate gets a majority of votes.

As Greg Orman points out at RealClearPolitics, this particular situation tends to benefit that Republican incumbent.

Some voters want to vote for the Republican incumbent and either know or can figure out who that Republican incumbent is by, you know, READING THE BALLOT. They’ll rank Daniel S. Sullivan first, and may or may not pick a second choice at all.

“Confused” voters who want to vote for the Republican incumbent and have problems READING THE BALLOT will likely rank the two Sullivans first and second just to be sure (unless they’re “confused” by Heikes’s Republican designation). In a second round, the more popular Sullivan will likely get the less popular Sullivan’s votes. It’s a safe bet that word has gotten around enough for the incumbent to outpoll the challenger as first choice.

“Problem” solved. Daniel S. Sullivan likely loses this election only if he’s less popular with voters than Mary Peltola.

Frivolous lawfare shenanigans like this go a long way toward achieving precisely that outcome. Even if Daniel S. Sullivan didn’t personally ask DOJ to publicly claim — right before an election! — that Alaska’s voters are too stupid to have their votes count, those voters are likely to notice the insult, and on whose behalf it was levied.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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How do you win an election? To the degree that elections are a lot like — some of us anarchists would say an actual form of — war, it’s worth consulting military figures on the subject.

Few military figures come off quite so quotable as Confederate cavalry general (and Ku Klux Klan founder) Nathan Bedford Forrest, who said of winning battles, “I always make it a rule to get there first with the most men.”

That, of course, also constitutes the conventional rule for winning elections: Get there first (by motivating mail and “early” voters as well as election day voters) with the most votes.

One variant: “I just took the short cut and got there first with the most men.”

In every election we hear accusations of various “short cuts,” such as registering unqualified persons to vote, combing the graveyards for names with still-registered voters in the caskets and casting ballots in their names, etc.

Sometimes the stories are true, sometimes they aren’t. They’re usually, but not always, attributed to the Democratic Party.

Republicans usually, but not always, get more credit for trying to suppress the Democrat vote than for trying to get out the Republican vote.

As this year’s midterm elections approach, that tactic looks a lot like another Nathan Bedford Forrest aphorism. It pops up in different forms, but I’ll use the one associated with the Battle of Day’s Gap, fought in May  1863. Forrest’s instruction to his troops:

“Whenever you see anything blue, shoot at it, and do all you can to keep up the scare.”

Earlier this year, Republicans started talking up the notion of stationing Immigration and Customs Enforcement gang members … er, “officers” — outside polling places to intimidate would-be voters.

When asked about that possibility in an October 1 interview with Time, Trump said he “doesn’t rule anything out or in” and mentioned the Insurrection Act. Voting in areas with lots of Democrats, you say, may just constitute insurrection.

Then the little “October Surprise” operations stepped up.

The US Department of Justice charged 21 individuals with illegal — specifically, non-citizen — voting in California.  The biggest takeaway from that SHOULD be that after years of asserting huge numbers of non-citizen votes, DOJ only thought it could make the charge stick against one one-millionth of California’s registered voters.

The Department of Homeland Security raided the home of US Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in an “immigration fraud” investigation, even though it’s literally impossible for her to have lied on her immigration and citizenship paperwork (her father, claiming her as a minor dependent, filled out and signed that paperwork).

Back to the US Department of Justice:  On October 23, it filed suit in Alaska to preemptively overturn that state’s US Senate election … but only if incumbent Daniel S. Sullivan loses. It seems there’s an invisible, previously unnoticed clause in the US Constitution forbidding candidates with similar names (like independent Daniel J. Sullivan) to challenge Republican incumbents.

Any of these several “one weird trick” moves, taken in isolation, might come off as a frivolous waste of the public’s time and the government’s stolen money.

Taken together, though, they constitute a strategy: Whenever you see anything blue — be it a Democratic-leaning state electorate or polling place, a Democratic congresswoman who’s an easy target for dog-whistle attack, or an independent candidate whose votes might bring a Republican candidate up short of victor — shoot at it, and do all you can to keep up the scare.

I guess if I was a Republican strategist looking at current poll numbers, I might suggest desperation plays like these myself.

I hope the effect of those tactics is less to influence the specific outcomes than to wake Americans up to the nature of politics itself. It really IS just another form of war.

And, as with most kinds of war, this kind inevitably despoils the public and rewards the belligerents. The politicians aren’t your friends. They’re soldiers in an evil, unworthy cause.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On October 19, US president Donald Trump visited Kansas to prop up a lagging Republican candidate (US Senator Roger Marshall), and he brought the bucks with him, pledging an $8 billion bailout for farmers hurt by Trump’s tariffs and Trump’s war on Iran.

That follows $150 million for power lines in Alaska (to goose another tight Senate race), $475 million in $500 “ObamaCare refunds” on September 10, $1.9 billion in $90 “Medicare Part B rebates” on October 2 (seniors are an especially key voter demographic) , and of course  his promise to put a $5,000 check in the mail to each adult US citizen after — and only if — his party prevails in the upcoming congressional elections.

“A billion here, a billion there,” the late US Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL) mused, “and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

Government spending is almost always about buying votes, but never more obviously than during campaign season.

With the elections only two weeks away, it’s not impossible that we’ll see Trump motorcading through swing House districts, using a leaf blower to distribute hundred dollar bills, before the Big Day.

He’s in a tight spot of his own making (on, among other issues, “affordability”). And many past presidents have found themselves in such situations.

His party faces near certain loss of the House of Representatives and possible loss of the Senate. Nothing new there, either — the ruling party almost always loses seats, and sometimes majorities, in midterms.

And whenever that happens, the “free money” spigot gets turned on full blast. Trump’s not unique so far as the impulse goes. He’s just got more of a flair for the theatrical.

Of course, all that faux generosity has to be paid for … and it gets paid for by, at least in part, the same people the “free money” lands on.

In order to spend money, the government has to have money. Which means it either taxes you to get the money, or it borrows the money and promises to beat it out of you later (with interest).

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL (although he was far from the first to express the sentiment):

“There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.”

Is fake “free money” a good reason to vote Democrat in November? No, it isn’t. When in power and in danger of losing power, the Democrats throw around “free money” too. That’s how political government works: Take money with one hand, pass out less than you took with the other. As one New Deal politico put it, “tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.”

I’m skeptical that we can vote our way out of that scam, but if you want to try,  you should look for Libertarians on your ballot.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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