Justice Department declines to give update on Alaska probes with Senate race too close to call

The Department of Justice declined to give an update Wednesday on its investigations into Alaska's elections as the state's high-profile race for Senate remains too close to call.

The department confirmed last week that there is a probe into allegations of a plot that is designed to confuse voters in the midterms by recruiting a candidate with the same name as the state's incumbent senator.

U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman said at the time that the investigation has been going on for a while. 

When asked if the investigations were still going on, the Justice Department declined to comment on specific plans to the Washington Examiner but pointed the outlet to civil filings and Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interview with Fox News, in which he defended preserving ballots to examine possible voter confusion over a spoiler candidate.

Blanche said there was a scenario in which incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan “could lose, but really he didn’t lose,” if confusion between the two candidates affected the outcome. 

“That’s why you need to preserve these ballots,” he said.

The refusal to provide an update on the investigation comes as Sullivan's top challenger, Mary Peltola, leads the Republican with 102,701 to 102,075 in first-choice votes. The race has not been called.

Alaska has a ranked-choice system where if no candidate wins more than 50% of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated. Ballots for that candidate transfer to each voter’s next choice in the race. The process repeats until someone has a majority of the remaining active ballots and wins. 

Sullivan's campaign argued enough voters who initially backed the two last place candidates ranked the Republican Sullivan as a backup choice that would put him ahead of Peltola by 328 votes, thereby winning the election.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.