Schiff Calls DOJ Lawsuit Election Subversion While Ignoring the Actual Subversion

Adam Schiff has spent years building his brand as democracy’s guardian. He managed Trump’s first impeachment. He sat on the January 6 committee. He’s made an entire career out of telling Americans that Trump threatens our electoral system. So naturally, when the Justice Department filed a lawsuit over Alaska’s absurd Senate ballot situation, Schiff rushed to the cameras to declare the DOJ itself was now trying to subvert elections.

The irony is thick enough to cut with a butter knife.

Here’s what’s actually happening in Alaska. Senator Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, is running for reelection. Fair enough. But sharing the ballot with him is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., an unaffiliated candidate from Petersburg who somehow managed to qualify through Alaska’s ranked choice primary system. State election officials initially disqualified this second Sullivan, citing concerns that his candidacy existed purely to confuse voters. They pointed to his requested ballot name, recent party registration, and campaign materials that seemed designed to create maximum confusion. An Alaska Superior Court judge overturned that disqualification. The state Supreme Court upheld the reversal. Now both Sullivans are on the ballot, along with former Democratic Representative Mary Peltola.

Republicans say this is obvious political sabotage. Democrats propped up Daniel Sullivan to siphon votes from Dan Sullivan, helping Peltola slip through in Alaska’s ranked choice system. It’s the kind of maneuver that would have Schiff screaming about election integrity if the parties were reversed. But since it potentially benefits Democrats, he’s suddenly discovered newfound respect for state sovereignty.

“They don’t have standing to bring this kind of a suit,” Schiff told NBC News. “It’s not the federal government’s business to run Alaskan elections.” He compared the DOJ’s lawsuit to Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election, praising William Barr for refusing to support overturning results while accusing current Attorney General Todd Blanche of being “all in on this disgraceful campaign.”

You know what’s disgraceful? The selective application of principles depending on which party benefits.

State courts resolved this question, Schiff argues, and the federal government should stay out. That’s actually a defensible conservative position. States run their own elections. Federal interference should be minimal. The problem is that Schiff has never applied this standard consistently. He’s been perfectly comfortable with federal intervention when it serves his political goals. He’s supported nationalizing election rules through federal legislation. He’s championed DOJ involvement in voting rights cases across the country. But now, when the Justice Department questions whether Alaska voters are being deliberately confused by a same name candidate, suddenly he’s a states’ rights purist.

The Alaska situation stinks regardless of your party affiliation. Two candidates with virtually identical names on the same ballot creates obvious potential for voter confusion. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s common sense. Whether that confusion was engineered or accidental matters enormously. State officials initially thought it was engineered. They tried to remove the second Sullivan from the ballot. Courts overruled them on procedural grounds, which doesn’t mean the concerns were baseless. It means the legal standard for disqualification wasn’t met under state law.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Alaska’s ranked choice voting system makes this name confusion particularly potent. Voters rank candidates by preference. If no one gets a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes gets eliminated and their votes redistribute based on second choices. In that system, a decoy candidate doesn’t need to win. He just needs to collect enough first choice votes to eliminate the real candidate or force a redistribution that benefits the third candidate. It’s a sophisticated trap for unwary voters.

Schiff knows all this. He’s not stupid. He’s just willing to ignore obvious problems when they benefit his side while screaming about election integrity when they don’t. That’s not principle. That’s partisanship dressed up in sanctimonious language about democracy.

The DOJ’s lawsuit might fail. Schiff’s probably right about that. Federal courts generally defer to state election decisions unless there’s a clear constitutional violation. But whether the lawsuit succeeds misses the point. The question isn’t whether the DOJ can win in court. The question is whether Democrats deliberately created voter confusion to help their candidate. If Republicans did this, Schiff would be demanding investigations, filing ethics complaints, and holding press conferences about threats to democracy.

Instead, he’s attacking the Justice Department for asking questions. That tells you everything you need to know about whose election integrity he actually cares about protecting.

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