Stacking a ballot is when a little-known candidate runs for election to divert votes from a more prominent opponent. It is widely considered a legal, if unsavory, tactic.
And it is rocking Alaskan politics this week.
The state’s race for U.S. Senate is a tight contest between the Republican incumbent, Dan S. Sullivan, and the Democratic nominee, Mary Peltola. But also on the ballot is a retired schoolteacher named Dan J. Sullivan, from Petersburg, Alaska, who entered the race in the spring. Republicans say confusion over the Sullivans could cost the incumbent votes.
The New York Times found that operatives aligned with Ms. Peltola spent months recruiting candidates to siphon votes from her Republican competition. She and her campaign have denied any involvement with the lesser known Mr. Sullivan. That candidate also has denied any wrongdoing and said he was running because he was dissatisfied with Senator Sullivan.
The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit seeking to block certification of the election if the incumbent senator loses by a narrow margin, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, has called for an investigation.
Ballot stacking is hardly unheard of in American politics — up and down ballots, across party lines. Here are a few examples.
Rick and Ricky
Rick Perry ran for governor of Texas in 2022, but do not confuse him with the former Texas governor and U.S. energy secretary by the same name.
Instead, this man, whose full name was Ricky Lynn Perry, was, according to The Texas Tribune, an employee for a defense contractor.
In the end, Mr. Perry got just over 61,000 people to cast a ballot for him, netting 3.1 percent of the vote. Greg Abbott, a Republican, garnered nearly 67 percent of the primary vote at just shy of 1.3 million ballots, before going on to win the general election.
A Rodriguez That Made a Difference
In 2020, Frank Artiles, a former Republican state senator in Florida, recruited a friend, Alexis Pedro Rodriguez, to run in the state senate race against the incumbent Democrat, State Senator José Javier Rodríguez. The idea was the two men’s shared surname would confuse voters and pull votes away from José Rodriguez.
It worked: The incumbent lost by just 32 votes (the challenger Mr. Rodriguez received slightly more than 6,000), and senate Republicans flipped the seat.
Ballot stacking can cross into territory that’s legally questionable if, for example, a candidate is being paid to run. Alexis Rodriguez later pleaded guilty to charges of campaign finance crimes and agreed to participate in an investigation into Mr. Artiles. In 2024, Mr. Artiles was found guilty of campaign finance violations, including giving Mr. Rodriguez thousands of dollars in money and gifts in exchange for running, according to The Miami Herald. His lawyers appealed the verdict in 2025, The Miami Herald also reported.
She Ran, but Not Exactly
Jestine Iannotti, a former substitute teacher, ran as an independent candidate for the Florida state senate in 2020. She did not campaign and raised little money, but fliers depicting her as a Democrat were sent to voters and featured a stock photo of a Black woman. “Jestine Iannotti will always be there for us,” the fliers read. Ms. Iannotti is white.
Jason T. Brodeur, a Republican, won the senate seat with 141,544 votes to Ms. Iannotti’s 5,787.
Ms. Iannotti was labeled a so-called ghost candidate, someone who entered into a race with the intention not of winning, but of swaying the results. She eventually pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors, including one for accepting a cash contribution, The Orlando Sentinel reported.
Two Jerry Garcias
In 2020, Jerry Garcia ran against Jerry Garcia in a Democratic primary election for constable in Harris County, Texas. While neither bore relation to the late Grateful Dead frontman, one Mr. Garcia was a cousin of the incumbent constable’s wife.
The other was a law-enforcement veteran serving as a lieutenant to a constable in a different precinct. That Jerry Garcia had been campaigning for a year when the other Jerry Garcia, who had no law enforcement experience, entered the race on the last possible day.
When visited for comment at home, a local television station could not reach the last-minute entrant. It did, however, find a sign supporting the incumbent on his lawn.
While that Mr. Garcia, the latecomer, won only 9.3 percent of the vote, the primary went to a runoff, where the other Mr. Garcia, the one in law enforcement, edged out the incumbent by just 219 votes.
That Mr. Garcia went on to win in the general election.
A Name Change Foiled
In 1986, Jon D. “Peaches” Johnson, then a Louisiana state representative, ran for state senate. A challenger changed his name and entered the race: John Peaches Johnson. He ultimately did not qualify to be on the ballot, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The original Mr. Johnson went on to win.
JFK and a Janitor
In an example of ballot stacking from further back, two men named Joseph Russo ran against John F. Kennedy during the 1946 Democratic primary of his first congressional campaign. One Joseph Russo was a well-established Boston politician, the other was a janitor.
“I was pretty well liked in those days, and they put in this other Joseph Russo in order to complicate the names,” Mr. Russo, the politician, later said in an interview with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. He said he did not know who recruited the other Joseph Russo.
Mr. Kennedy won the primary handily.
