‘Decoy Dan Sullivan’ is why Americans don’t trust elections

That’s a quote from Jill Biden heading into Election Day 2020 in the race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The implication was clear from the future first lady: My husband is decent; Trump is not. Vote accordingly. That’s a declaration from Hakeem Jeffries ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The implication was clear from the future House Speaker: Republicans will cheat to win, while Democrats would never dare mess with the sanctity of free and fair elections.There are literally hundreds of other quotes from members of the Blue Team throughout the Trump era talking about “protecting” elections, saving democracy, and accusing the GOP of doing everything possible to manipulate the outcome. There’s zero evidence of any of this happening to benefit Republicans, of course, but with a subservient media in lockstep pushing the narrative, Democrats will continue to get away with it.Which brings us to what’s currently happening in Alaska, where a Senate race between Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican Dan Sullivan has come down to a razor-thin margin as of Saturday. “Decoy” Dan Sullivan has received approximately 4,100 votes. It is yet to be determined whether his entry onto the ballot will ultimately decide the winner, but here’s another question: How did Alaska officials allow this to happen in the first place?PELTOLA AGAIN CLAIMS VICTORY IN ALASKA SENATE RACE AS VOTE COUNT DRAGS ONTo review, back in 2025, Decoy Dan Sullivan quietly announced he was running for Senate and was added to the ballot. Did Decoy Dan hold one campaign rally since then? One town hall? No. Did he even have an active website on Election Day? No. Can anyone even know where Decoy Dan is right now? No. Because before the election, he could only be reached by land or by sea, which is one helluva way to run a statewide campaign.This is the most obvious statement of the year, but this was a farce of a candidacy designed to confuse voters and take enough votes away from the real Dan Sullivan to hand Peltola and Democrats the victory. A New York Times bombshell that landed just days before the election even appeared to show that Decoy Dan was recruited by the Peltola campaign and the candidate herself, an allegation she denies.“The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader,” the exclusive reads. “The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.”For its part, the Trump DOJ launched an investigation into the Alaska Senate race and Decoy Dan even before the New York Times piece hit. Legacy media pounced on the investigation by insisting what the Peltola campaign was attempting was no big deal by using the high school “everybody’s doing it” defense.From left: Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Dan Sullivan. “I use the term dirty tricks intentionally because it’s — it’s not illegal,” CNN “anchor” Dana Bash said before the election. “This is something that is untoward. It is something that Democrats have tried to do in races where they think it could be to their advantage to run candidates that could siphon votes away from Republicans and Republicans do the same.”President Donald Trump has also weighed in on the situation without ambiguity as to what should happen next:“Dan Sullivan PLUS Dan Sullivan wins the Alaska Election by thousands of votes,” he wrote on Truth Social. “All votes going to the Fake Dan Sullivan, which was done solely for the purpose of fraud and confusion, should immediately be given to the Real Dan Sullivan (Senator!) – Likewise the votes of the second fraudulent candidate, also put up by the Dems. There should be no question concerning this Rigged Election. Time is of the essence!!!”Regardless of how this race ends up being decided, there is a bigger issue here that is already tearing apart this country, and that’s not hyperbole: Trust in our elections is already and decidedly at an all-time low.Per a recent poll by Gallup, a majority of Americans, 51%, are not confident in electoral honesty. But when breaking that down by party, just 37% of Republicans are confident in the process, along with 35% of independents who feel the same way. On the flip side, nearly two-thirds of Democrats have confidence in the electoral process.Of course, the confidence factor changes depending on which party or candidate wins an election. Going into the 2020 election after Trump’s shocking victory four years prior, for example, 59% of those voters did not have confidence in electoral honesty. For context, only Chile and Mexico worldwide among the world’s 32 wealthiest countries have a lower confidence, with Hungary, Estonia, and Slovakia having notably higher confidence.Staying on the theme of voters suddenly losing confidence in the voting process after their candidate loses under what they feel was nefarious circumstances, let’s look at a poll following the 2016 election when Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton and her many allies in the media, claimed Russia stole victory from her.REPUBLICANS REEL FROM STAGGERING LOSSES IN RETURN TO CAPITOL HILL: ‘I’M THANKFUL TO HAVE SURVIVED’Per YouGov at the time, 66% of Democrat voters believed that Russia tampered with vote totals to ensure Trump won the election. This belief came despite there being zero evidence Russia had any ability to do so. But when the losing candidate, Hillary, repeatedly claimed that Russia stole the election from her, and most of legacy media ran with the narrative that the Kremlin worked hand-in-glove with Trump and his allies, the mistrust number from the Left suddenly isn’t so surprising.The same happened following the 2020 election, which was held under unprecedented circumstances during COVID-19. Joe Biden defeated Trump, who led by substantial margins on election night in key swing states including Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. But after mail-in ballots came in throughout the week, those leads all evaporated. Trump supporters were irate, along with the president.The result? According to YouGov, 81% of those who voted for Trump overwhelmingly believed that voter fraud influenced the election outcome, while just 3% of Biden supporters said the same.See how this works?As for changes to the way elections are run in places like Alaska, where even nine days later the state still isn’t close to counting all the ballots, here’s how election officials are dismissing any allegation of foul play: “I think Grandpa is confused again,” Eric Croft, the head of Alaska’s Democratic Party, told CNN, mocking Trump’s concern. “We already have a process to do this here and we know something about it. The Division of Elections released not just the ballots they had so far and we’re still counting up here. We take a kind of different approach.”“We treat this process more like sex,” he continued in what clearly was a rehearsed line for national television. “Finishing first and early is not the main goal. We prefer to take it slow, kind of do it right. And hopefully at the end everybody involved is satisfied.”If you just rolled your eyes at that one, you’re not alone.In the end, the Decoy Dan scandal may very well come and go, dismissed as no big deal.It is a very big deal, because those on the fence about whether voting in this country is done honestly may see this as the final straw.BLUE WAVE HITS VANCE’S 2028 CHANCES“Warned that if a free people grow polarized, indifferent to the law, or allow institutions to rot through internal division and neglect, democracy will fail from within rather than from an external enemy,” Abraham Lincoln once said.Truer words were never spoken.