While the New York Times is only now sounding the alarm on Mary Peltola’s efforts to recruit a second Dan Sullivan to confuse Alaska voters, experts warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed months ago that the scheme violates federal civil-rights law.
“Democrats’ dirty plot to subvert Alaska voters is unraveling, and Mary Peltola will be held accountable this November when Alaskans leave her unranked,” said NRSC National Press Secretary Bernadette Breslin.
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“In the Sullivan case, the U.S. government may conclude that they have the facts they lacked in Mackey. The Democratic consultant’s involvement in Decoy Dan’s gambit suggests two or more people acting in concert to put a candidate on the ballot with the same name as the incumbent. If an investigation can show that they did so to deceive voters who favor Sen. Sullivan into wasting their votes, that will be exactly the kind of conspiracy the government couldn’t prove in Mr. Mackey’s case.
“As to the trickery itself, the proof is in the pudding. Unlike proving the negative, as in Mackey, here the desired deceptive outcome will be actual votes for Decoy Dan. The existence of such votes will be evidence of the conspiracy’s success.
“Elections are messy, and the First Amendment protects many dirty tricks. It doesn’t protect efforts to deceive voters into casting ballots for the wrong candidate. That’s exactly what Decoy Dan and his Democratic confederate seem to be doing. While they might have pulled one over on the Alaska judiciary, the instigators of this scheme may still have federal civil-rights laws to contend with.”