Justice Department sues Alaska and California over election procedures

The U.S. Department of Justice filed two separate legal challenges regarding upcoming state elections in Alaska and California. The department is seeking court orders that would change how votes are counted or recorded in both states.

In Alaska, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to block the results of the state election. The legal action only takes effect if the Republican candidate loses the race. President Donald Trump initiated the effort after posting on social media that the presence of two U.S. Senate candidates named Dan Sullivan in Alaska was confusing. He asked courts to remove the candidate who is not the Republican incumbent.

The lawsuit does not claim that any errors occurred when ballots were created. The department argues that having two candidates with the same name creates a legal issue. However, no law prohibits a candidate from sharing a name with another candidate running for the same office.

In California, the department filed a request before the election for a federal district court to stop the state from counting approximately 20,000 mail-in votes. These votes have not yet been cast. The Justice Department also asked a court of appeals to review the case before the district court held a hearing. This is an unusual procedural step.

The appellate judges who heard the California case appeared skeptical of the government's position. The department had difficulty proving that the specific recipients of the mail-in ballots were non-citizens. It also struggled to show that those recipients actually received the ballots.

The Justice Department is not the first entity to challenge election procedures in these states. Since Donald Trump first ran for office ten years ago, he has used the courts to question election results. The Supreme Court has generally declined to intervene in these disputes. The only time the high court decisively changed an election outcome was in the 2000 case of Bush v. Gore.

In that 2000 case, the Supreme Court ended a recount in Florida. The initial challenge to the count came from Al Gore's team. George W. Bush had been declared the winner after the first count. The court did not flip the electoral results in that instance, and it has not done so since.

The current legal battles are part of a pattern that began before Trump won his first election. In October 2016, he claimed that large scale voter fraud was happening on and before election day. These pre-election legal moves aim to question the legitimacy of the results before votes are finalized.