OPINION:
“Hello. I’m Dana Bash in Washington, where the state of our union is wondering what’s in store next week,” the CNN anchor opened her show “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“We’re nine days from the midterm elections, and President Trump seems concerned. He took to social media last night to vent about his new obsession, Alaska’s Senate race, where incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Mary Peltola.”
Ms. Bash’s first guest was Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Oct. 23 that allows the federal government to step in if voters in Alaska confuse the two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. One is the incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, and the other is a random decoy named Dan J. Sullivan.
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Mr. Blanche told Ms. Bash what Republicans have been complaining about for months: Dan J. Sullivan was intentionally recruited and placed on the ballot by Democrats to confuse Alaskan voters and siphon votes from the Republican incumbent.
With Alaska’s ranked choice voting, voters have to list their preferences for four candidates in order on the ballot, which can lead to scenarios in which having two Dan Sullivans on the same ballot could be problematic.
Still, Ms. Bash rejected this premise entirely — almost as if it were some sort of right-wing conspiracy theory — and crafted one of her own. The Justice Department’s lawsuit was nothing more than Republicans trying to undermine the integrity of our electoral system and “lay the groundwork” where “President Trump tries to overturn the election.”
“The result of that could be, God forbid, what we saw after January 6,” Ms. Bash projected.
On Wednesday, The New York Times revealed that Democratic operatives did indeed comb Alaska’s voter files to find multiple Dan Sullivans. They then traveled the state to meet the men they found to ask whether they would be willing to run for Senate.
Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village, bit. He had no interest in becoming a politician but said “he hated Trump, and if it was going to help Mary, he liked Mary.”
Dan J. Sullivan was not the only candidate whom Democrats hoped to leverage as a spoiler. Gerald Heikes, a drywall contractor, was also recruited to run as a Republican to further divide the GOP vote, the Times reported.
To ensure that Ms. Peltola would not face a major Democratic rival in the four-way general election, democratic socialist David Leslie dropped out of the race.
Their work was done. Alaska’s ballot lists the names of Democrat Mary Peltola, Republican Dan S. Sullivan, Gerald Heikes, registered Republican, and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., listed without a party affiliation — presenting voters with a crowded field.
Ms. Bash was not the only mainstream media personality who openly denied that any of this was happening. In a hostile interview with Mr. Blanche on Sunday, Margaret Brennan of CBS’s “Face the Nation” insinuated that the Justice Department’s potential involvement was part of Mr. Trump’s attempt to take over Alaska’s perfectly honest election process.
“What right does the federal government have telling a state not to certify or how to certify” an election? she questioned.
“Because of the way that Alaska ballots are set up, where — where voters can vote for more than one candidate, there is a way, potentially — we don’t know what’s going to happen yet — where it will be obvious from the results and from the ballots that voters were confused,” Mr. Blanche responded.
“All we are doing is trying to put guardrails in place so that if that — this — that happens, there’s a system allowed where the ballots are kept in a way so that we can determine whether there was confusion,” he added.
Mr. Blanche then pointedly asked Ms. Brennan why she was not focusing on the main issue at play: a decoy Dan Sullivan running for U.S. Senate with the sole intention of confusing voters and pulling votes from the incumbent Republican senator.
Ms. Brennan then did what so many Trump-deranged reporters do: She justified Alaska’s system by stating that a “good faith” requirement does not appear in the Constitution, thereby implying that any shenanigans in Alaska must be on the up and up.
Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are perfectly fine with orchestrating voter fraud — so long as it benefits their party. And all the while they’re doing it, they’ll maintain and try to frame Republicans as the true threat to our electoral process.
Alaska’s rigged election proves it.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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