There’s been a lot of hand-wringing and sermonizing over the dueling Dan Sullivans mishigas in Alaska. It’s called ballot stacking and the practice is as old as the republic. It’s also not illegal.
The Insult Comedian is threatening Team Peltola with prosecution. There is, of course, no crime but when has that ever stopped the MAGA DOJ? Just ask Jim Comey about his seashells by the seashore indictment.
It’s more smoke blown by Team MAGA. The Alaska Supremes have already handled it with the Senators ballot entry where he’s listed as, “Dan S. Sullivan Registered Republican Incumbent.”
Donald Trump used the listing to belittle his own voters:
So much for this mook’s very good brain. Nobody insults the intelligence of Trump voters more than Donald. That’s why I call him the Insult Comedian.
As far as I’m concerned ballot stacking is gamesmanship, not ratfucking. But I’m the guy who dismissed the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal; it’s as old as baseball itself. BTW, I considered degendering gamesmanship but gamespersonship sounds like a George W. Bush-style malaprop.
The best thing I’ve read about the Alaska mishigas comes from Josh Marshall:
I’ve heard a number of people say they’re “troubled” or “disturbed” or unhappy that this happened. All I can say is that I would really recommend that you toughen up because you simply won’t make it through the next few years, even under the best circumstances. There is no crime here and no possibility of a crime here. This is trolling. At worst, it’s a dirty trick. If it is a dirty trick, it is a special kind since it has been out in the open and has been a staple of Alaska political news for the better part of a year. Election officials in Alaska already took note of the possibility of confusion and added the word “incumbent” after Sen. Dan S. Sullivan’s name on the ballot, as well as “registered Republican” to make certain that no one can be confused as to who is who. State authorities are the only ones permitted to judge this question and arrive at a solution to it, if it requires one. They already have.”
A bigger problem than the ballot stacking is the NYT’s judgment in pursuing this story. On one level it’s a valid news story but it’s hardly the most important election story in 2026, especially given Team MAGA’s attempt to discredit the results.
The Times felt obliged to publish a defense of their process. It’s strictly from the legacy media’s both sides playbook. I call bullshit: On one side there’s actual fraud, on the other there’s what is at worst at dirty trick. It’s also irrelevant given Alaska’s ranked choice voting system. All the Dan Sullivans in the world can’t change that.
The featured image comes from the credits of the marvelous TV show Northern Exposure. It ran from 1990-95 and was set in the fictional small town of Cicely, populated by charming oddballs. It was produced and written by some of the people who went on to make The Sopranos and The Americans. That’s irrelevant but interesting, much like the ballot stacking story. The people of Alaska have the right to vote against Peltola over it BUT it shouldn’t lead to prosecution or a refusal to seat her in the senate because of this mishigas. Let the voters not the MAGA trolls decide.
The musical last word goes to Dwight Yoakam:
The countdown last word goes to Harold Lloyd who’s still hanging in there:
What pisses me off is the Times story, just days before Nov. 3. This is the same newspaper that sat on a bombshell story for months about the Bush administration spying on its own people. The story in 2004 was that the Times held the story because they didn’t want to influence the election. Once Dumbya was safely re-elected (John Kerry having spent a lot of time fighting against the scurrilous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth), the Times published.
Now the Times has decided that affecting an election in the waning days is no big thing, and the fact that the “scandal” here has already been adjudicated by the Alaska courts as very cool, very legal is carefully barbered out of the narrative of the Big Juicy Story.
Side note on the Astros: There’s sign stealing and then there’s what the Astros did, which was to set up a camera in center field to steal the catcher’s pitch call, route it to a monitor in the dugout passageway, and tip off their hitter whether the pitch was going to be a fastball or something off speed. When the Astros got caught, they couldn’t imagine how all that just happened and don’t penalize little old us. It was nauseating and a lot of otherwise canny sports commentators fell for it.