Alaska’s two ‘Dan Sullivans’: How common is ballot stacking, does it work?

The Alaska Senate ballot in the next week’s midterm elections in the United States features two candidates with the name Dan Sullivan – one the incumbent Republican senator and another a retired teacher with no prior political experience.

Last week, The New York Times reported that aides to Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat challenging Republican Senator Sullivan for a crucial seat, helped recruit candidates bearing names similar to Sullivan’s in an apparent bid to manipulate the ballot and siphon votes from the incumbent.

The controversy has triggered a political firestorm in the US, and prompted President Donald Trump to order a Justice Department investigation into alleged voter fraud.

“It was a scheme. It was election fraud. Total election fraud,” Trump said. Peltola has rejected the accusations, saying the dispute is distracting from voters’ concerns.

On Friday, US Attorney Michael Heyman said Democrats had “orchestrated a sprawling conspiracy to recruit and prop up Daniel J Sullivan as a sham candidate”, adding that “we are taking that extremely seriously”.

So, how common is this electoral tactic – and does it work? We look at history to find out.

What’s happened in Alaska?

Daniel J Sullivan Jr, the second Dan Sullivan, announced his US Senate candidacy on May 29, just three days before Alaska’s June 1 filing deadline. The Republican nominee on the ballot is also called Dan Sullivan. The second Sullivan has repeatedly denied any Democratic push behind his candidacy.

However, the Times’s reporting earlier this week triggered a political storm over allegations that Democratic operatives had sought to manipulate Alaska’s crucial US Senate race by recruiting candidates to split votes for Republican incumbent Sullivan.

The report alleged that people aligned with Peltola, her campaign’s lawyers and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) had coordinated an initiative to recruit candidates who could dilute Sullivan’s support – internally called the “ballot composition project”.

According to the Times, a Peltola campaign staffer was tasked with identifying Alaskans named Dan Sullivan.

The strategy, commonly called “ballot stacking”, involves recruiting or encouraging candidates to enter a race not necessarily to win, but to influence the distribution of votes and improve another candidate’s chances.

Alaska has four candidates on the ballot – and the presence of two candidates named Sullivan could potentially confuse voters.

The report prompted Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy to order a criminal investigation.

“I just want to clear the air,” Peltola said at the top of a speech in a downtown bar in Juneau, Alaska’s capital, on Friday. “I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters.”

The race is considered key to control of the US Senate.

Does ballot stacking work?

Past instances show that the strategy can work at times to manipulate voters.

One of the starkest examples emerged in Florida’s 2020 state Senate race, when Republican political operative and former state senator Frank Artiles allegedly orchestrated a scheme to recruit a namesake candidate to undermine Democratic incumbent Jose Javier Rodriguez.

According to prosecutors, Artiles paid Alex Rodriguez, who shared the incumbent’s surname, to enter the race as an independent candidate to confuse voters and divert ballots from the Democrat to his Republican challenger, Ileana Garcia.

Incumbent senator Jose lost by just 32 votes – while the other Rodriguez garnered more than 6,000 votes without having led a meaningful campaign.

Later, Alex Rodriguez pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2021 and agreed to cooperate with investigators, and Artiles was later convicted in connection with the scheme and fined.

Similarly, in 2024, Washington’s Democratic state Attorney General Bob Ferguson was joined by two namesakes in the primary race, after a Republican activist was alleged to have paid the other two Fergusons to run.

However, Democratic leader Bob Ferguson threatened legal action – and the decoys dropped out. Ferguson was elected governor.

Have there been other cases of ballot stacking?

Though stacking a ballot is a political tactic used in other countries as well, the US has seen a couple of its own instances, in Florida and Washington.

During John F Kennedy’s first congressional campaign, a second candidate named Joseph Russo entered the Democratic primary for Massachusetts’ 11th Congressional District. The first Joseph Russo was a prominent Boston city councillor who opposed Kennedy.

Kennedy’s campaign manager and his father, Joseph P Kennedy Sr, have been implicated in accounts of the alleged scheme, but the extent of JFK’s personal involvement remains disputed.

In the June 1946 primary, Kennedy received 22,183 votes, while the two Russos collectively received 6,460. Kennedy won the nomination.

In India, the world’s most populous country, fielding such namesakes is a common tactic – but not always a successful one.

In the 2019 national election, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Gandhi family, faced three namesakes in Wayanad, Kerala, in southern India. The candidates were named: Rahul Gandhi K E, Raghul Gandhi K, and K M Sivaprasad Gandhi.

Congress’s Rahul Gandhi won Wayanad by a landslide, however, securing 706,367 votes.

In the 2014 national election, Bollywood actor and a candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Hema Malini, faced two namesakes in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh. The actor also won that election decisively.

In the 2014 election, in Mahasamund in Chhattisgarh, Congress candidate Ajit Jogi faced BJP’s Chandu Lal Sahu in a race with seven other candidates named Chandu Lal Sahu. BJP’s Sahu won by a margin of nearly 11,000 votes, whereas his namesakes collectively got 62,934 votes.

But for some, it has proven costly in India. Also in the 2014 election, incumbent Member of Parliament, K Sudhakaran from Congress, was defeated by a margin of 6,566 votes. His two namesakes, K Sudhakaran Sreeshylam and K Sudhakaran Kollon, secured 2,745 and 4,240 votes, respectively.