Greg Martone told NewsNation on Sunday that he had cast a ballot for Dan Sullivan but later began to question whether he had chosen the right person. The Alaskan voter said he grew uneasy once he realized another candidate with a nearly identical name was also on the ballot.
He explained that he had meant to support Sen. Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, yet could not clearly recall seeing a second name. Martone raised his right hand to his head while speaking with the reporter.
“I just might be having a brain freeze, but I don’t remember the second Dan Sullivan,” he said. NewsNation reporter Nancy Loo said Martone seemed genuinely confused by the layout and thought he might have marked the line for Dan J. Sullivan instead of the senator he intended to back. The network displayed the ballot, which placed “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr” directly above “Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent.”
Two names appear in sequence on the Alaskan ballot
Martone described the chance that he had selected the wrong candidate as small but real. “There is a slight possibility I voted for the wrong Dan Sullivan. I mean there is a slight possibility – I’m hoping I’m just kinda getting paranoid,” he said, then gave a nervous laugh. He added that he planned to check a sample ballot to confirm the order of the names.
The voter’s concern followed a report published last week by The New York Times. According to the Times, staff members working for Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat running against Sullivan, spent months trying to locate another person named Dan Sullivan.
The newspaper reported that in the summer of 2025 a Peltola staffer received instructions from senior campaign aides to identify as many Dan Sullivans living in Alaska as possible. The staffer reviewed voter records and compiled a list of individuals who shared the name.
The Times said the search succeeded when Dan J. Sullivan agreed to enter the race earlier this year. The report characterized the effort as an attempt to pull votes away from the incumbent Republican.
After the article appeared, President Donald Trump urged that Peltola and other Democrats face prosecution over the matter, which some have labeled the “Decoy Dan” scandal. Trump had earlier urged voters to trust the real Dan Sullivan. Attorney General Todd Blanche also criticized Democrats and said they had engaged in cheating.
According to Mediaite, the Justice Department filed suit last Friday in an effort to postpone certification of the results if the Republican Sullivan did not win. A federal judge dismissed the case on Sunday. Loo noted that other Alaskans reacted differently to the presence of the two candidates. One woman said she agreed with Martone’s unease and found the situation confusing.
“I just put a ‘J’ in my mind for ‘Jerk.’ He never meant to run,” the woman said. “His whole thing was to be deceitful, and unfortunately it speaks very little for him, but it puts a real bad mark on the state of Alaska.”
A second resident took a more dismissive view when asked about the matching names. “This is something that both parties do, so in my opinion it’s much ado about nothing,” he said.
Published: Nov 3, 2026 09:15 am