LETTER: Alaska voters deserve an honest Senate ballot

Published 1:30 am Sunday, June 21, 2026

Anyone who’s spent even a little time around Alaska politics knows a Senate race won’t be polite or gentle. Campaigns get tough. Candidates take shots at each other, challenge each other’s records, question motives, and leave voters to make sense of it all.

That’s just how politics works.

But there’s a clear difference between tough campaigning and misleading voters. A campaign can be aggressive without trying to confuse people about who is really asking for their vote.

That’s why the case of Dan J. Sullivan, the Petersburg candidate who filed for U.S. Senate alongside Senator Dan S. Sullivan, matters. Any Alaskan who meets the legal requirements has a right to seek public office. Protecting that right is important, but so is protecting voters’ right to know who they are voting for.

The Division of Elections determined that the evidence does not support Dan J. Sullivan’s eligibility to appear as a Republican, and it removed him. That decision shows the Division takes ballot integrity seriously.

No one should be surprised if a lawsuit is filed to try to keep Dan J. Sullivan on the ballot. But if misleading voters is a tactic that’s allowed to succeed, it will be copied elsewhere, and that would weaken trust in elections when we should be strengthening it.

Every voter deserves to know exactly who they are voting for. Politics can be tough, but the ballot should still be honest.

Matthew T. Fagnani