Wherever there’s a conservative temper tantrum, Jonathan Turley will be there. Turley’s late-stage career is basically a wrestling gimmick, casting himself to right-wing media as a “Democrat” law professor making a heel turn. The George Washington Law professor reliably bloviates about how some Democratic party position doesn’t sit right with him and Fox News viewers get to feel like they’ve heard “both sides” because this representative of the twin evils of academia and vaguely liberal thinking totally agrees with them!

Part of playing this character is sounding like a well read intellectual. Alas, “sounding like” is not the same as being one, which is how the professor managed to misquote one of the most iconic statements of mid-century American history.

Turley’s latest post on the Alaska Senate race seeks to scold Democrats for not being enraged about the fact that two people are named Dan Sullivan. One Dan Sullivan seeks reelection as Alaska’s senator. Also on the ballot is another, considerably less viable Dan Sullivan. This describes the state of affairs throughout the race, but as it comes to its end, the GOP has finally realized that it may well lose that seat to Democrat Mary Peltola. So, over the last few days, Republicans have rallied around the second Sullivan as a “dirty trick” designed to steal the election from the other Sullivan. In the process, the DOJ went so far as to demand that the state refuse to accept the results… but only if the Republicans lose. That take has proven to be a loser in courts.

For his part, Turley opens his broadside against the Democrats citing George Orwell and closing on the Army-McCarthy hearings. It’s a properly erudite framing for Turley’s self-caricature as an academic.

Except for the way he doesn’t bother to get the quote right.

We are left again in that moment with lawyer Joseph Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954: “Have you no shame, sir, at long last? Have you no shame?” The answer today is clear: No, but I have the votes.

Yeah… that’s not what he said. In reality, Welch very famously said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Look, the sentiment is roughly the same. If the guy at the end of the bar quoted it wrong, only a true pedant would correct him. Which is to say I would correct him, but I’d feel a little bad about it. But Turley is not the guy at the end of the bar. He’s a law professor framing a hot take around a historical quote to sound smart even though he cannot be bothered to make sure he’s even got the quote right.

But this speaks to a bigger issue with Turley’s whole schtick. At a fundamental level, he’s just intellectually lazy. The confidence that drives him to (mis)quote history from memory is the same assurance he brings to his slapdash legal analysis. From rewriting Martin Luther King Jr’s life to firing off his misunderstanding of civil procedure to concocting conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden based on warping space-time, Turley just sort of says stuff. Accuracy isn’t really a priority.

According to New York Times reporting summarized by Alaska Public Media, operatives aligned with Democrat Mary Peltola and the DSCC allegedly recruited Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. onto the ballot to siphon support from incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. Despite this accusation, the other Sullivan says he had “no conversations whatsoever with the Peltola campaign.”

If it did happened as alleged, then it was incredibly stupid — not because it’s sleazy, but because it wouldn’t work.

Turley’s piece quotes Rep. Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia:

But, in Alaska, they have ranked-choice voting, and third-party candidates are very relevant. And so, if you recruited a third-party candidate who can take votes away from your opponent, that’s part of the process, and that’s just how it works in Alaska.

That is not how it works in Alaska. In fact, that is the OPPOSITE of how it works in Alaska.

Turley had an opportunity to dunk on Subramanyam here, but that wouldn’t fit the GOP narrative, so instead he credulously accepts Subramanyam’s incorrect framing and grumbles that the congressman “insisted that it showed how all states should embrace the widely criticized ranked-choice voting system.”

Except, ranked choice voting is exactly why this tactic would never work. Turley adds with an air of hopefulness, “Alaskans may finally reject the [ranked choice] system this year,” even though recruiting a decoy candidate actually could undermine an election in a normal, first-past-the-post election system.

Alaska runs a top-four primary followed by a ranked choice general. If nobody tops 50 percent of first-choice votes in the general election, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots that placed the last-place candidate first will have votes awarded to their second-place candidate in the next round. It keeps running like this until someone has a majority.

If a confused Republican voter could not figure out which Sullivan was which, they would just need to rank both of them — first and second — in whatever order.

One of two things happens in this scenario: Either Peltola has more votes than both Sullivans combined, meaning there’s no “vote splitting” because the real Sullivan was going to lose anyway. Or Peltola beats each Sullivan individually, but the Sullivans together outpoll her. After the first round (or second round… there’s a fourth candidate who will disappear first), the weaker Sullivan gets eliminated, and every ballot that ranked him first now counts for its second choice, and the “right” Sullivan wins.

Recruiting a decoy in a ranked choice system doesn’t split votes, it delays the inevitable by a couple minutes.

Preventing vote splitting is the point of the system! It’s an instant runoff that asks every voter up front, “if your first choice doesn’t make the runoff, who would you vote for next?” It saves the cost of a second election, and it defangs spoilers. Harvard Law’s Nicholas Stephanopoulos told FactCheck.org the scheme is “much less impactful in Alaska than just about anywhere else.” That’s being overly fair to the prospect of a Republican voter who sees two Dan Sullivans, votes for the wrong one, and then turns in the rest of the ballot blank. And, with all due respect for the challenges facing America’s stupid, that’s not an impact worth strategizing around.

This isn’t actually hard!

Yet, as Turley noted, Alaska’s Ballot Measure 2 would repeal ranked choice and return the state to partisan primaries and first-past-the-post. Trump insists Sullivan “would win easily” without RCV, even though the system only protects him from the alternative Sullivan. As Reason points out, without ranked choice the incumbent would simply lose all of the roughly 2.5 percent the non-senator Sullivan pulled in the primary. The Senator will instead be adding most if not all of that to his total.

A legal analyst would perform basic research on the math and history of ranked choice voting to counsel voters not to imagine threats to electoral sanctity that don’t exist. A conservative legal analyst could even use it as an opportunity to mock any Democrat who thought vote splitting was even possible in a ranked choice election. But Turley is neither. He’s a cartoon character that right-wing media hauls out to lend a veneer of credibility to their preferred talking points.

And in this case, the preferred narrative is to accuse Democrats of stealing elections, even if (or especially if) the facts don’t back that up.

We are left again in that moment — not with lawyer Joseph Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954 — but with Jonathan Turley. “Have you no shame, sir, at long last? Have you no shame?”

“That’s Part of the Process”: Democratic Leaders Embrace Voter Confusion Tactics as Harmless or Humorous [jonathanturley.com]

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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