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And that’s basically it!
That feels illegal. You can't enter the race just because you share a name with someone else?
If they can paint a picture that it was not a sincere and genuine campaign and was in fact a ploy to pull votes away from the real candidate, sure.
Candidates typically use a distinct version of the name in that case, such as "Daniel" instead of "Dan", or with a distinct middle initial included. A serious candidate does not usually want to be confused with their opponent.
They usually have the nominating party listed for each candidate, too.
In this case, both would be "Dan Sullivan (R)"
The way this race lists them, it's based on what party the candidate proclaims themselves to be.
Oh this is for a primary election. Still a stupid decision by the chief.
Republicans have purposely run someone (as an independent) with the same name as the Democrat in the past, hoping to peel off dumb voters. Fooling a couple hundred can be all it takes sometimes.
Some bullshit ruling there. Saying you can't run because of your name is wild.
Alaska elections director, Carol Beecher, wrote that the “utterly unprecedented facts” in the case led her to conclude that Dan J Sullivan’s declaration of candidacy for US Senate “was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality”.
My dude, if you disqualified candidates for their actions to confuse, mislead, and compromise election integrity, there would be no republicans left on the ballot.
Just gotta call out this scene from season 5 of Fargo
“Sorry that username is already taken“
Kinda reminds me of the story of how David X Cohen (Futurama, Disenchantment, The Simpsons) got the middle initial X when his middle name is Samuel: when he went to be registered with The Writers Guild there was already a David S Cohen, and they don’t allow two people with identical names to be registered, so he chose X because it sounds more ‘sci-fi-ish’.
So confusing to not only have a different middle name but also a different party identifier at the end!