Alaska Democrat Senate Candidate Peltola: ‘It Should Be Criminal Offense to Lie or Mislead Electorate’

After Wednesday’s New York Times article exposed a scheme by Democrat Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign to confuse and deceive Alaska’s voters, an ironic video clip of Peltola declaring that her supporters should strive to criminalize such behavior quickly went viral.

The Times article documents how Peltola’s campaign sought out and recruited a man with the same first and last name as her opponent, Dan Sullivan, and convinced him to put his name on the ballot in order to dupe voters trying to vote for the incumbent Republican senator.

“It should be a criminal offense to lie or mislead the electorate. YES!” Peltola says in the video clip of comments reportedly made in August.

“Yes, yes, let’s work for that,” Peltola adds.

The video went viral after being promoted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). On the group’s X.com account alone, the view has been viewed more than 600,000 times as of Friday morning.

“We’ve got to stop the lying!” Peltola declares, before being asked the question about dishonest campaigning that prompted her now-viral proclamation, a longer video clip of her comments posted on YouTube by The New York Post shows.

Peltola then goes on to urge those who are registered to vote to actually do so.

A NRSC press release highlighting Peltola’s claim that “it should be” a criminal offense to deceive voters explains that it already is a crime, according to federal law:

“Peltola’s and the Democrat establishment’s desperate scheme to rig Alaska’s Senate race is an illegal conspiracy against rights that violates 18 USC 241. 

• Conspiracy between two or more parties to deceive voters into wasting their votes is a federal crime known as “conspiracy against rights”. 
• The First Amendment does not protect efforts to deceive voters into casting ballots for the wrong candidate.”