Kyle Bailey
The two major political parties often play games with our elections by recruiting same-name candidates to mislead voters or by spending money to bolster lesser-known candidates who might split votes with chief rivals and change election outcomes.
In 2026, the GOP spent more than $1 million on advertising to bolster the Socialist candidate in Ohio's US Senate race, aiming to split the center-left vote and re-elect Republican Senator Jon Husted with less than a majority.
In 2024, conservative Republican activist Glen Morgan raised money and paid the filing fees for two other “Bob Fergusons” to run as third-party candidates against incumbent Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson in the general election.
In 2020, former Republican State Senator Frank Artiles recruited a candidate with the same last name as the sitting Democratic congressman, Rodriguez, to run as a third-party candidate and pull votes away from the incumbent.
His ploy successfully flipped the district by just 32 votes.
In 2012, Democratic US Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and her allies meddled in the GOP primary and spent millions to manufacture a challenger widely considered the weakest possible Republican nominee.
This gamesmanship is nothing new. In 1946, two candidates named Joe Russo were recruited to split the Italian vote and elect Irishman John F. Kennedy to the US House.
This week, the New York Times released a sensationalized story about same-name candidate recruitment in the Alaska US Senate race. While the story treats “vote-splitting” as a valid concern, Alaska does not use first-past-the-post elections with single-choice voting.
Alaska's system uses a nonpartisan primary followed by a four-way general election in which ranked choice voting eliminates “split” votes, “wasted” votes, and “spoiler” candidates, and ensures winners are broadly supported by voters.
When Alaska voters walk into the polling booth on Election Day, they will see a “Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.” and a “Dan S. Sullivan” on their ballot for US Senate. If they didn't already know which Sullivan they wanted to vote for, one is clearly identified as both the “incumbent” and a “Republican.”
The handful of voters who still have questions can rank one Sullivan first and the other second. With ranked choice voting, if no candidate receives an outright majority on election night and a voter’s first choice can’t win, their vote automatically counts for their second choice.
Undoubtedly, the Democratic operatives behind the same-name candidate recruitment in the Alaska US Senate race believed their actions were clever. They were not. At the same time, Donald Trump and his allies are making much ado about nothing.
It is an opportunity for them to further their partisan goals of undermining confidence in our elections, confusing voters about reforms like ranked choice voting that promote voter choice and consensus, and attacking Democrats.
Despite the best efforts of hyperpartisan politicians and operatives on both sides of the aisle, Alaska voters will vote their hopes, not their fears, in the US Senate election and elect a winner broadly supported by voters because ranked choice voting gives them that power.