Ghosts on the Ballot: Spoilers, Look-Alikes and the Two Dan Sullivans

By The Reluctant Citizen October 31, 2026 15 min read

In November 2020, a Miami-area state Senate seat changed hands by 32 votes. The Democratic incumbent was José Javier Rodríguez. On the same ballot was a no-party candidate named Alex Rodriguez who did not campaign, did not live in the district and still got more than 6,000 votes. Later he admitted that a former Republican state senator had paid him about $44,000 to run.

Six years later, voters in Alaska will open a ballot with two Dan Sullivans on it. One is the Republican senator. The other is a retired teacher from Petersburg. The Trump Justice Department has already sued to stop certification if the senator loses.

This post looks at candidates who seem to be on the ballot mainly to pull votes from someone else: who got caught, what courts did, which conspiracy claims held up. Then a short, evidence-based look at Alaska.

My thesis (this is opinion): Spoiler and look-alike candidates are an old, bipartisan, worldwide trick. In most places the trick itself is legal. The cases that end in punishment are almost always about the money: hidden donors, false filings, payments to candidates. Courts very rarely overturn a result, and they shouldn’t be the main defense. Disclosure, ballot design and voting rules work better. In Alaska, the reporting now points strongly to a deliberate Democratic-side effort. The federal lawsuit to block certification is still the wrong remedy. It has no clear legal basis, and it is aimed at an election that ranked-choice voting already makes hard to spoil.

A note on framing: The usual story is the party in power diluting a challenger’s vote. That fits Florida in 2020, Illinois in 2016 and Russia in 2021. Alaska runs the other way. The alleged look-alike targets the Republican incumbent, and the reporting ties it to allies of the Democratic challenger. Republican-aligned groups also paid to boost fringe candidates in the same race.

How a spoiler works#

There are three versions, often combined:

The look-alike: a candidate with the same or a similar name as a real contender. The goal is confusion.
The siphon: a candidate pitched to the target’s voters, like a Green against a Democrat. Voters know what they’re choosing; the trick is who quietly pays.
The paid ghost: a candidate who doesn’t campaign. Someone else’s mailers do the work.

The spoiler isn’t trying to win. In a plurality race, where the most votes wins even without a majority, a few thousand votes in the right place is enough.

1. Florida 2020: the ghost candidates#

The record: Three Florida state Senate races in 2020 had little-known no-party candidates who barely campaigned, promoted by nearly identical mailers. The mailers were paid for by committees chaired by a GOP consultant and funded through a dark-money nonprofit that reporting traced to consultants close to Florida Power & Light. FPL denied paying for or directing it.

Senate District 37 (Miami-Dade). Alex Rodriguez took 6,382 votes. Republican Ileana Garcia beat incumbent José Javier Rodríguez by 32 votes after a recount. Alex Rodriguez pleaded guilty in 2021 and testified against former GOP senator Frank Artiles, who had paid him about $44,000. In September 2024 a jury convicted Artiles of three campaign-finance and false-statement felonies. Judge Miguel de la O gave him 60 days in jail, five years’ probation and a ban on political work, telling him “tribal poison politics got the better of you.” He also noted that running a ghost candidate is not itself illegal. Artiles is appealing.
Senate District 9 (Seminole County). Jestine Iannotti got more than 5,000 votes. Republican Jason Brodeur won by about 7,600. Iannotti pleaded no contest to misdemeanors. Ben Paris, a local GOP figure, was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2022. Brodeur was never charged and said he didn’t know.
Senate District 39. Celso Alfonso was never charged. He faced only a recommended $250 ethics fine over a disclosure form.

The conspiracy claims and the evidence: The core claim, that Republican operatives deliberately ran ghosts to split the Democratic vote, was proven in SD 37 and partly in SD 9. Claims reaching FPL itself or the winning senators were never proven. Garcia and Brodeur kept their seats.

What changed in law: Very little. A 2021 ghost-candidate proposal was dropped from that year’s election bill, and a 2023 bill by Sen. Tracie Davis died. In my opinion, that’s Florida’s lesson: the people punished lied on forms or moved money illegally. The trick itself is still legal.

Sources

2. Illinois 2016: the most powerful man in Springfield#

The record: In 2016, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan faced a Democratic primary challenge from Jason Gonzales. Two other Hispanic-surnamed candidates, Joe Barboza and Grasiela Rodriguez, also got on the ballot. Gonzales sued in federal court. He alleged they were sham candidates placed by Madigan’s operation to split the Hispanic vote.

How it played out: Madigan won with about 65%. In 2021 the Seventh Circuit ruled against Gonzales (Gonzales v. Madigan, 990 F.3d 561). Judge Frank Easterbrook reasoned that Gonzales had exposed the alleged scheme publicly before the vote. Voters could weigh it, so the political process, not a court, was the remedy. That set it apart from a 1973 case, Smith v. Cherry, in which the court let a lawsuit over a hidden stalking-horse scheme go forward. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Why it matters (opinion): This is the classic version: an entrenched incumbent accused of watering down a challenger’s base. The courts’ answer was the usual one: once the trick is public, voters decide. (The 2016 allegation was never proven.)

Sources

3. The siphon: Republicans and the Green Party#

This is the most common American version. Republican operatives or donors help a left-wing third party get on the ballot because Green voters are more likely to come from Democrats.

Texas, 2010. A group called Take Initiative America paid a petition firm more than $500,000 to put the Green Party on the Texas ballot. An Arizona Republican consultant organized the drive, and the original donor was never publicly identified. A trial court blocked the Greens, but the Texas Supreme Court let them on. Texas Democrats sued over the money. In 2012 they quietly reported a $210,000 “confidential litigation settlement.”
Arizona, 2010. Former Republican lawmaker Steve May recruited people, several of them homeless, to run as Green Party candidates. A state judge wrote: “The court has no hesitation in finding that each of these candidates was recruited in bad faith with a purpose to confuse the voting public.” He still left them on the ballot, because they had qualified legally and seemed to genuinely want to run.
Montana, 2018 and 2020. A judge removed Green candidates twice. In 2020 the state GOP admitted paying $100,000 for the petition drive, but only after the party was certified. More than 560 signers asked to withdraw once they learned who was behind it. Judge James Reynolds wrote that the GOP’s “misrepresentations and failures to disclose… were intentionally designed to create an advantage.” The Montana Supreme Court upheld the removal. The state’s campaign-finance commissioner found the GOP and an allied committee broke disclosure rules. The Green Party of Montana said it was not behind either effort.
2020 presidential race. AP found that people with GOP ties helped Kanye West qualify for ballots in several states. The Trump campaign denied involvement. Wisconsin kept West off because his papers were late. West himself, asked by Forbes whether he was running to hurt Biden, replied: “I’m not denying it.”

Why it matters (opinion): In all four, voters weren’t fooled about who the candidate was. They were fooled about who was paying. Where the law forced disclosure, as in Montana, it worked. Where it didn’t, as in Texas, the donor stayed hidden.

Sources

4. Michigan 2010: Democrats invent a “Tea Party”#

The record: In 2010, the chair and the political director of the Oakland County Democratic Party filed papers putting three people on the ballot as “Tea Party” candidates. The aim was to split conservative votes. Some of the three didn’t know they had been filed. A grand jury followed, and both men pleaded no contest to felonies including perjury. Each got a year of probation, 180 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine. The judge called it “just as heinous a crime as someone who kills somebody else.”

Why it matters (opinion): Remember this one when anyone claims only one party does this. And again, the charges were for forged and false filings, not the strategy.

Sources

5. South Carolina 2010: the plant that wasn’t#

The record: Alvin Greene was an unemployed veteran who gave no speeches, raised no money and had no website. He won South Carolina’s 2010 Democratic Senate primary over a former judge and legislator. Rep. Jim Clyburn said: “I don’t know if he was a Republican plant; he was someone’s plant.” He also wanted to know who paid Greene’s $10,440 filing fee. State police investigated. They found the money came from Greene’s own savings, including his military exit pay. SLED’s chief said, “There’s no big conspiracy.” AP’s reporting offered a duller explanation: his name came first on an alphabetized ballot in a low-information race.

Why it matters (opinion): Not every strange candidate is a plant. Any honest look at Alaska has to keep this case in mind.

Sources

6. The world has seen this before#

Russia, 2021. In a St. Petersburg legislative race, Boris Vishnevsky of the liberal Yabloko party faced two opponents who had legally changed their names to Boris Vishnevsky. Their ballot photos showed matching beards and balding gray hair. Neither campaigned. The Guardian called “double” candidates a recurring Russian tactic. Authorities let all three run. Vishnevsky lost by about 1,300 votes; the doubles took about 1,100.
Ukraine, 2019. International observers from the OSCE found 152 candidates with 69 identical or similar names in 45 districts. They called it “a persisting electoral malpractice.” Police opened 46 investigations into “clone” candidates. Observers concluded that the practice misled voters and “impacted the election results in some of the majoritarian contests.”
India, 2024. India has a long tradition of namesake candidates. A petition asked the Supreme Court to stop them. Justice B.R. Gavai asked how anyone could bar a person whose parents named them Rahul Gandhi, and the petition was withdrawn.
United Kingdom, 1994. In a European Parliament race in Devon, a retired headteacher ran as a “Literal Democrat.” He didn’t campaign and got more than 10,000 votes. The Liberal Democrat lost by about 700. A court upheld the result. The UK’s answer came in 1998 through the law, not the courts: a party registration system that stops candidates from using confusingly similar party labels.

Why it matters (opinion): Authoritarian systems tolerate doubles because the doubles help the people in power. Democracies have mostly handled it through ballot design rather than by judging motives: registered party names, clear labels and, in India, party symbols on the ballot. No democracy I found bans people from running under the name they were born with.

Sources

7. What the pattern shows#

Across these cases, five things stand out.

Running is legal. Lying usually isn’t. Every criminal penalty I found was for money or paperwork. Courts in Florida, Arizona, Illinois, Britain and India all said, in effect, that a willing candidate may run, whatever the recruiter’s motive.
Results almost never get overturned. Not one case here reversed an election. That includes Florida’s 32-vote margin, where wrongdoing was proven.
Exposure is the main remedy. Montana’s disclosure law got the GOP-funded Greens removed. In Illinois, public exposure ended the court case: tell voters, then let them decide.
Both parties do it. Republicans in Florida, Texas, Arizona and Montana. Democrats in Michigan, Illinois and, according to the reporting, Alaska.
The voting system matters most. Every case where a spoiler plausibly changed the result was a plurality race. That brings us to Alaska.

8. Alaska 2026: the two Dan Sullivans#

What is documented:

Incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan faces Democrat Mary Peltola on Tuesday. Also on the ballot are Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired Petersburg teacher, and Republican Gerald Heikes.
Dan J. Sullivan filed in May as a Republican, though he had never been registered as one in Alaska. The state Division of Elections disqualified him, saying he filed “with a purpose to confuse or mislead.” A state judge reversed that, finding the claim “not supported by a preponderance of evidence.” The Alaska Supreme Court agreed that officials can’t add a “good faith” test to the U.S. Constitution’s qualifications for the Senate.
In the August top-four primary, Peltola got 49.5%, Sen. Sullivan 41.4% and Dan J. Sullivan 2.5% (4,107 votes).
On October 23, at Trump’s direction (“I’m the one that said do it”), the Justice Department sued Alaska. It asks the court to block certification if Sen. Sullivan loses and would have won with Dan J. Sullivan’s votes added to his. Former DOJ official Justin Levitt says no law gives DOJ that power. David Becker of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research called it “an unprecedented intervention by the federal government.” Alaska, Peltola and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) have moved to dismiss; Alaska noted DOJ never joined the earlier ballot litigation. Judge Sharon Gleason has fast-tracked the motions. As of Saturday, there’s no ruling.
On October 28, the New York Times reported that Peltola’s aides searched for Dan Sullivans in 2025. It said DSCC staff were on texts about it, and that an out-of-state operative contacted Dan J. Sullivan, who reportedly said he was open to running “if it would help Peltola.” The Times reporter said he “did not find anything that appeared illegal.”
Peltola says she “knew nothing about any other candidate” and is “not interested in tricking voters.” The DSCC says it is “not involved with Dan J. Sullivan.” Dan J. Sullivan denies any coordination. Trump said Peltola and Dan J. Sullivan “should be prosecuted.” The U.S. attorney confirmed “both a civil investigation and a criminal investigation.” Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered a state probe. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a longtime friend of Peltola’s, accused her campaign of “a pattern of lies and coverups.”
The spoiler money went both ways. The Alaska Beacon traced about $835,000 from a GOP-aligned group, funded mostly by the Senate Leadership Fund, boosting fringe left-wing candidates, and $2.35 million from a Democratic-aligned group boosting fringe conservatives, including Dan J. Sullivan and Heikes. Some of it came through a fund with no traceable donors.

What is still open:

The Times’s key source, Peltola’s fired former campaign manager, has tried to retract her statements. The Times stands by its story, which cites a dozen sources plus texts and documents.
Whether any money or promise went to Dan J. Sullivan. NBC election analyst Stephen Richer, a Republican and former Maricopa County recorder, says recruiting may be legal if there is “no inducement, like money or threats.”
What crime, if any, prosecutors have in mind. No charge has been filed and no statute named.

What is speculation: Claims that Peltola personally directed the plan, or that “election fraud” occurred, have no public evidence behind them yet. So far the evidence points at her campaign and its allies, not at her.

In fairness: Dan J. Sullivan says friends joked for years that he should run, and Alvin Greene shows that an apparent plant can turn out to be just a candidate. Courts have been right to protect willing candidates. Letting officials remove someone by guessing at motives is a dangerous power, especially when they answer to one party in the race.

Sources

9. Why ranked-choice voting changes the math#

Every spoiler in this history worked because of plurality voting. In Florida’s SD 37, a vote for the fake Rodriguez simply disappeared. Alaska’s general election uses ranked-choice voting. Voters rank the four candidates. If no one has a majority, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their ballots go to each voter’s next choice.

Dan J. Sullivan is almost certain to finish last or near last. When he’s eliminated, a voter who ranked him first and the senator second moves straight to Sen. Sullivan. A confused voter who ranks both loses nothing. The only votes really lost come from voters who rank only the wrong Sullivan. The ballot also labels the senator as the Republican incumbent and the other with no party, which directly addresses the confusion.

That’s why the DOJ’s request is strange on its own terms. It wants to add Dan J. Sullivan’s votes to the senator’s, but under RCV most of them already reach the senator through voters’ own rankings. The remedy assumes a plurality election Alaska doesn’t hold, a point the state made in its motion to dismiss.

10. My assessment (this is opinion)#

Was it intentional? Probably, at least on the part of some Democratic operatives. The Times’s documents, the search for Dan Sullivans and the candidate’s ties to a Democratic-aligned consultant fit the classic pattern. So does the $2.35 million in Democratic-aligned spending boosting fringe conservatives. The source’s attempted retraction weakens one part of the story, the claim that Peltola herself knew. It doesn’t erase the documents. I’d put it this way: a deliberate effort by allies is likely; the candidate’s personal knowledge is unproven.

Is it illegal? Based on the precedents above, probably not by itself. If investigators find money changing hands or lies on official forms, that changes. Otherwise a recruited candidate who wants to run is legal, however cynical.

Will it matter? Probably not, because of RCV. Most of those 4,000 votes come back.

What about the lawsuit? This is the part that worries me most. A federal lawsuit filed before Election Day, at the president’s request, asks a court to block certification only if his party’s candidate loses. No court in this history granted anything like that, even where fraud was proven. Florida’s 32-vote seat stood. The UK let a 700-vote result stand and changed the law. Then the president called for prosecuting his party’s opponent before any charge existed. That fits a pattern I’ve written about in History Has Seen This Before and The Crazy Things Trump Says, Part 2.

Both things can be true. A Democratic-side campaign may have pulled a dirty trick. And the federal response is a bigger threat to election integrity than the trick itself.

Bottom line#

From Miami to St. Petersburg, spoilers and doubles show up wherever winning takes only the most votes and money can stay hidden. The fixes that have worked are boring: disclose who pays, label candidates clearly, require registered party names and use voting systems that don’t let a few thousand misplaced votes decide a race. Alaska has most of those. What it has now that the others didn’t is a federal government trying to decide the outcome in advance in court. On Tuesday, the voters should decide, with both Sullivans on the ballot and every ranking counted.

This post reflects reporting available as of October 31, 2026. The Alaska case is moving fast, and a court ruling could come before Election Day.

Filed under Politics Elections Democracy Rule of Law History