Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy said Sunday that state investigators are examining possible wrongdoing, including conduct that "might resemble perjury," surrounding the disputed candidacy of a second Dan Sullivan in Alaska's tight Senate race. "We are in the midst of investigations as to determine if there was any wrongdoing," the Republican governor said in an interview with WABC radio's The Cats Roundtable, according to Fox News, "especially anything that might resemble perjury." His remarks came as Democrat Mary Peltola led Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by 2,517 votes, nearly a week after the polls closed. The candidate at the center of the inquiry, Daniel J.
Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg, drew 1.7 percent of the vote as of Monday afternoon. That is 3,651 votes, more than the current margin. He has denied coordinating with Peltola's campaign.
The investigations, a federal lawsuit and the tight race have intensified a separate fight over Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, which Dunleavy called “very confusing” in the same interview. Voters are deciding, for the second time in two years, whether to repeal it through Ballot Measure 2. Dunleavy's office did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment by publication.
The state's investigation followed a New York Times report in late October that people connected to Peltola's campaign and national Democrats had worked to recruit Daniel J. Peltola's campaign has denied involvement in recruiting him. Federal prosecutors are pursuing their own inquiry, and the Justice Department has sued to block certification of a Peltola win if votes for him could have changed the outcome.
"When The New York Times article came out, you know, we already knew a lot of what was happening there," Dunleavy said Sunday. It remains unclear whether recruiting Daniel J. Sullivan would violate any criminal law.
Ballot stacking is not illegal at the federal level, and the Justice Department has not said which offenses it is examining. Michael Morley, a Florida State University law professor, called the department's lawsuit "completely meritless." The lawsuit rests on a simple premise: that votes for one Sullivan were meant for the other. Alaska's system complicates that arithmetic.
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