The DOJ’s Alaska Stunt: Inane, Far-Fetched, and Impossible to Enforce

First, the department’s entire basis for asserting a federal role is the preamble to the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law about, as the name suggests, registering voters. DOJ doesn’t claim Alaska violated any of the act’s provisions. Instead, it claims authority to dictate the state’s certification process because the preamble cites a statutory purpose “to protect the integrity of the electoral process.” That’s like invoking the Constitution’s preamble goal “to promote the general Welfare” to make everyone eat broccoli.

The department vastly overreads the preamble, in any event. The very same section of the act lists its first purposes as increasing the number of eligible citizens who register to vote and enhancing their participation as voters. DOJ skips past those to invoke “integrity” for the opposite end: freezing the votes of an entire state, but only if those votes elect a Democrat.

Second, there is, manifestly, no live dispute. The DOJ asks a court to rule on something that hasn’t happened and may never happen: a Peltola win, by less than the second Sullivan’s total, with ranked-choice transfers breaking a particular way. Even if the case weren’t otherwise ridiculous, any court would tell the DOJ to come back if and when its speculation came to pass. Indeed, in virtually any other election case, the DOJ itself would be making that argument.