Two Plaintiffs, One Ballot
If the “Incumbent” designation carries into the general election, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and Mary Peltola both have grounds to challenge it in court — and the evidence to back it up.
The 2026 Alaska primary ballot gave one candidate something no Alaska candidate has received in at least ten years: the word “Incumbent” next to his name. If that designation carries forward to the November general election, two candidates will have legal grounds to challenge it — and one of them has documentary proof that the same Division of Elections refused to give her the same word when she was the sitting incumbent two years ago.
What Happened on the Primary Ballot
When the Alaska Supreme Court ordered the Division to include Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the 2026 primary ballot, it directed the Division to list him “within the confines of existing Alaska ballot design law.” Alaska regulations already prescribed the solution for identical names: middle initials. Dan J. vs. Dan S. That’s what the law said to do.
The Division did something else. It listed Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. without any party affiliation despite his having filed as a Republican, and added the word “Incumbent” to Dan S. Sullivan’s entry — a designation the Division had not used for any candidate in at least a decade. The result was a ballot with three tiers where Alaska law contemplates one.
No statute authorizes this structure. No prior election used it. The Division created it after losing in the Alaska Supreme Court, using its remaining ballot design authority to give the incumbent a label his party’s allies had just spent two weeks trying to secure for him through litigation.
The 2024 Proof: Peltola Got No Such Label
There is now documentary proof — from the Division of Elections’ own website — that “Incumbent” was never used even when a sitting officeholder was on the ballot.
The 2024 Alaska primary sample ballot for House District 11, obtained directly from the Division of Elections website, lists Mary Peltola — the sitting U.S. Representative for Alaska’s at-large district — as:
“Peltola, Mary S. (Registered Democrat)”
No “Incumbent” designation. Name and party only — the same format as every other candidate on that ballot, including Nick Begich, Nancy Dahlstrom, and Eric Hafner.
Source: elections.alaska.gov/election/2024/Primary/SampleBallots/HD11.pdfThis is not a technicality or an inference. It is the Division’s own document, showing that when a Democratic incumbent ran under the same Alaska ballot design law in 2024, she received no special designation. When a Republican incumbent ran in 2026, he received one. The governing law did not change between those two elections. The Division’s practice did.
If Sullivan Jr. Advances: Two Plaintiffs Emerge
The primary is August 18, 2026. The top four vote-getters advance to the November 3 general election. If Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is among them, the same three-tier ballot structure would appear on a general election ballot seen by all Alaska voters — and two candidates would have immediate grounds to challenge it.
The Legal Arguments
Alaska law may not permit “Incumbent” at all. Alaska statute and its implementing regulations prohibit titles and honorifics on ballots. The incumbent cannot be listed as “Senator” — that is a title. “Incumbent” carries the same normative signal: this person is already the established holder of the office. Whether it qualifies as a prohibited honorific has never been resolved by an Alaska court, and the Division’s own attorneys acknowledged the legal question during the Sullivan litigation.
The regulation already prescribed the answer. The Division had authority under existing regulation to use middle initials to distinguish two candidates with identical names. Dan J. for Petersburg. Dan S. for the incumbent. The Superior Court in the underlying case pointed directly to this regulation. The Division went beyond it — and going beyond the prescribed remedy requires statutory authority the Division cannot identify.
The court’s remand did not authorize this. The Alaska Supreme Court directed the Division to list Sullivan “within the confines of existing Alaska ballot design law.” “Incumbent” is not within those confines. It was never used before. It has no basis in existing law. The Division exceeded the scope of what the Court authorized.
The equal protection problem is documented. The 2024 Peltola ballot is not an allegation. It is a document. The same Division applied one standard to a Democratic incumbent in 2024 and a more favorable standard to a Republican incumbent in 2026, under the same governing law, without explanation. Courts take that kind of documented inconsistency seriously.
A standard that appears only for some incumbents and not others — with no change in law between elections — is not a standard. It is a choice. And choices made without legal authority, in ways that benefit one candidate over others, are exactly what equal protection doctrine is designed to address.
The Timeline
Unlike the Sullivan disqualification case — which required an emergency filing, same-day briefing, and oral argument on an hours-long timeline — a general election ballot challenge has room to breathe. Primary results are certified in September. General election ballots go to print in October. A challenge filed promptly after certification would give an Alaska court several weeks to consider the merits before any ballots are printed.
That is a more workable timeline than the case that started all of this. And the legal record is already built: the Supreme Court’s S-19935 order, the Division’s own sample ballot from 2024, ten years of prior practice showing no incumbent was ever labeled, and the Division’s attorney’s own courtroom admissions about the Hafner precedent.
The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed Sullivan Jr.’s right to be on the ballot and remanded to the Division the question of how he should be listed “within the confines of existing Alaska ballot design law.” Whether the Division stayed within those confines — or went beyond them — has not been adjudicated. If Sullivan Jr. advances to the general election, that question will have two new plaintiffs with standing to raise it.
The Point
The Division tried to keep a candidate off the ballot. It lost. It then designed the ballot in a way that gave the candidate whose allies triggered the removal proceedings an unprecedented advantage — one it refused to give a Democratic incumbent two years earlier. If Sullivan Jr. makes it to the general election, the voters won’t be the only ones watching. The courts may be too.
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