By Andrew Goudsward and Jarrett Renshaw
WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s administration is intensifying legal action against US states with just days to go until a midterm election that will decide the balance of power in Washington during his final two years in office.
In Alaska, the Justice Department filed an amended lawsuit on Thursday seeking to block the certification of results in the event of a narrow Republican loss in a hugely consequential Senate race, citing a New York Times report that Democratic operatives recruited a spoiler candidate to siphon votes from the Republican incumbent.
In California, meanwhile, the DOJ is escalating its pressure campaign against state election officials, issuing subpoenas as part of a criminal probe into alleged voting by non-citizens, according to copies of documents seen by Reuters.
The moves, taken together, represent an extraordinary federal intervention in state elections, which are administered locally under the US constitution. As November 3 nears, election officials around the country have told Reuters they are bracing for further legal challenges from Washington.
The dispute in Alaska, home to one of about 10 highly competitive Senate races, could leave control of the chamber unclear for weeks. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win back the majority from Republicans.
If Democrats take one or both chambers of Congress, they could launch probes into Trump’s administration and increase pressure on the president to end the war in Iran.
TRUMP SCALES BACK TRAVEL
On Friday, Trump will campaign in Florida, hoping to galvanize his supporters in a state he won handily in 2024 but where early voting has tilted toward Democrats.
It will be his latest stop in a state Republicans usually expect to win, following campaign events earlier this week in Mississippi and South Carolina.
The president canceled planned weekend rallies in Kansas and Iowa and will instead participate in some 20 virtual campaign appearances before Tuesday, according to the Republican National Committee.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who Trump defeated in the 2024 election, will rally for Democrats in Atlanta on Friday.
“The last year and a half, it’s been difficult,” she told the crowd on Thursday at an event in Macon, Georgia. “Now we’re in the phase where we can do a whole lot.”
More than 44 million Americans had already voted as of Thursday evening, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, less that two million shy of the total from the 2022 midterms.
At a polling center on Thursday in Columbus, Ohio, home to highly competitive Senate and governor’s races, election official Antone White said turnout was about twice as high as 2022.
Among those waiting to cast their ballot was Sadirah Simmons, a senior citizen living on a fixed income. “The economy is not getting any better,” she said. “You have to go out and vote if you want change.”
ALASKA SENATE DISPUTE
In its revised lawsuit in Alaska on Thursday, the Justice Department wrote that operatives for Democratic candidate Mary Peltola orchestrated a “sham campaign for the purpose of misleading Alaskan voters.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the operatives recruited a candidate with the same name as incumbent Dan Sullivan.
Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy called for a state investigation and said in an interview with News Nation that any finding of illegality “may in fact impact whether someone is seated in the US Senate.”
Alaska election officials called the amended lawsuit “meritless” in a court filing on Thursday night, saying it has “cast a cloud over Alaska’s election that is contrary to the public interest.”
Peltola’s campaign did not immediately respond to the amended complaint but has previously said it had “no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.”
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has denied involvement and accused Republicans of propping up candidates of their own in other races.
Daniel J. Sullivan has previously denied that his aim was to cause confusion or divert votes from Dan S. Sullivan.
“This guy’s existence is gonna hurt Mary Peltola so much more than it helps her,” said Alaska-based elections and campaign attorney Scott Kendall. But with so few undecided voters left, he added, the revelations were unlikely to impact the outcome of the race.
Julie Wyatt, a 62-year-old logistics manager who lives in the capital of Juneau, said such trickery was nothing new in Alaskan politics, and she still planned to vote for Peltola.
“If the Republicans are this desperate, Mary has them on the ropes,” she wrote in an email.
CALIFORNIA SUBPOENAS
In California, meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office received grand jury subpoenas last week as part of a DOJ probe into alleged non-citizen voting, according to copies of the documents seen by Reuters on Thursday.
“At every step, the US Department of Justice has taken a confrontational, adversarial approach,” Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said in a statement on Thursday. “Election officials are acting in accordance with state and federal law.”
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the subpoenas but said that California and the federal government “agree that non-citizen voting is properly addressed through criminal law.”
(Additional reporting by Max Schwarz, Kia Johnson, Maria Tsvetkova and Jan Wolfe; Writing by Costas Pitas. Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
