Maureen Edobor Comments on DOJ Lawsuit Over Alaska Senate Election Edobor discusses the Justice Department's legal challenge to the certification of Alaska's Senate election results.

By Law Communications
October 30, 2026

 

Washington and Lee University School of Law professor Maureen Edobor was quoted in a recent  Bloomberg article examining a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to prevent Alaska from certifying the results of its U.S. Senate election under certain circumstances.

The lawsuit concerns two candidates with similar names on the ballot: incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., who is running without a party affiliation. The Justice Department argues that the second candidate could confuse voters and is asking a federal judge to block certification if the incumbent loses by a margin smaller than the number of votes received by Daniel J. Sullivan. The lawsuit relies on the National Voter Registration Act, a federal law primarily governing voter registration and the maintenance of voter rolls.

Edobor, whose research focuses on election law and voting rights, questioned whether the statute provides a legal basis for the Justice Department’s requested intervention.

“It is difficult to imagine the DOJ gets the relief they seek unless a judge is willing to stretch the meaning of the NVRA so far as to reach election disputes Congress didn’t spell out in the statute,” Edobor told Bloomberg.

An expert in election law, constitutional law, and voting rights, Edobor’s scholarship examines how constitutional and election law doctrines influence access to democratic participation and shape collective understandings of civic identity. Her research and commentary have recently been featured by NPR and other national news outlets as courts and policymakers continue to grapple with major questions surrounding election administration and voting rights.

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