Docket #3: The Government Lost Its Election Cases the Week It Lost the Election

Alaska appealed, California quit, Mississippi has no recount law, Comey waits on a grand jury, Hegseth's articles went to committee, and the Court waved a wall through. Case by case, with next dates.

The Docket is the Wednesday feature: the week in court, case by case, what moved, what it means, and the next date on the calendar. The rule is that nothing goes in without a filing, a ruling or a docket entry behind it, and that where I’m reading between the lines I say so.

This week the pattern is retreat. The Justice Department came into the election with three lawsuits aimed at ballots and came out of it with one on appeal, one voluntarily dismissed, and a Senate seat in Mississippi it hasn’t sued over yet because the state’s law gives it nothing to sue with. The one case moving in the government’s direction is a wall.

Alaska: the count, the appeal, and the demand.

What moved. Monday night’s batch of nearly 5,000 ballots took Mary Peltola’s first-choice lead over Dan Sullivan from 637 to 2,517, 106,321 to 103,804, with about three-quarters of the expected vote in. Gerald Heikes has 4,865 and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., the namesake, 3,651. The Justice Department’s suit to impound ballots, dismissed by Judge Sharon Gleason on November 1 for lack of standing and because setting ballots aside is not a remedy the court “can or should order,” was appealed the same day. The briefing schedule runs weeks past certification. The president’s Thursday post demanding the namesake’s votes be “immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan” has no filing behind it and, as this publication explained Friday, no mechanism in Alaska law.