Re: A Second Mary Peltola!

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Ballot stacking is not new and it is not illegal regardless of what Trump is claiming.

usnews.com - How common is ballot stacking inside the practice embroiling alaskas senate race

There are also plenty of historical examples:

Before becoming president, John F. Kennedy represented Massachusetts' 11th District in the House of Representatives. During his first primary campaign in 1946, a scheme engineered by Kennedy’s campaign operatives and funded by his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, saw an area custodian named Joe Russo recruited into the race. The name of Kennedy’s Democratic rival? Joe Russo.

In his book “The Kennedys: America’s Emerald Kings,” Thomas Maier describes a similar scheme that Kennedy’s maternal grandfather, John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, had survived decades before in 1907. Detractors attempted to confuse new immigrant voters by introducing an identically named prop candidate. Maier wrote that Honey Fitz ran campaigns urging his supporters to "Vote for the original John F. Beware of substitutes!" Fitzgerald won the Democratic nomination in the race for Boston mayor that year but lost the election.

Former Florida state Sen. Frank Artiles was convicted in 2024 of making excessive campaign donations to “ghost” candidate Alex Rodriguez in a 2020 Florida Senate race. Rodriguez appeared on the ballot with Artiles’ help to draw votes away from then-Democratic incumbent with the same last name: Jose Javier Rodriguez. The scheme appeared to work, with Republican candidate Ileana Garcia winning the seat by 32 votes after Alex Rodriguez received more than 6,000.

In 2010, former Republican Arizona state Rep. Steve May recruited homeless people to run for the Green Party in local and state elections. Arizona’s Democratic Party unsuccessfully filed a court challenge to have the candidates removed from ballots, including a pedicab driver nicknamed “Grandpa” and a tarot card reader with a trademark purple-and-green jester hat.

Nebraska Progressive Republican Sen. George William Norris faced a name-doppelganger during a 1930 campaign in the midst of his three-decade Senate run. Conservative Republicans enlisted another Nebraskan George W. Norris – a grocer – to primary the incumbent. The incumbent Norris was nonetheless reelected and continued to serve in the upper chamber until 1943. The case, which involved a federal office, a congressional investigation, and state and federal Supreme Court decisions, became the best known example of ballot stacking at the time.

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