阿拉斯加的选票上有两个丹·沙利文。要把他们分开，只能靠中间那一个字母。

Get one rule straight first, and everything absurd that follows will stand up.

This November, the state of Alaska has to elect a United States senator.

Two people will appear on the ballot at once, with exactly the same name. Both are called Dan Sullivan.

The first Dan Sullivan is the sitting senator, and he has already served two full terms.

The second Dan Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher who, before this, had never held any public office.

He has said publicly that he does not like the current president, and he did not mark any party beside his name on the ballot.

Two people, one name, one ballot, the same string of letters in the same box.

The reason this can happen has to do with Alaska’s unusual election system.

Alaska’s primary does not separate the parties. Every candidate goes in together, and all voters vote on all of them.

The top four finishers all go through to the November ballot, regardless of party and regardless of experience.

Put another way: make the top four, and your name gets printed on the final ballot.

That retired teacher took three thousand six hundred votes and finished third.

Three thousand six hundred votes might not carry a single township in another state.

In Alaska, that number was enough to put a man onto a statewide ballot.

Advancing alongside him was former Representative Mary Peltola.

She is a Democrat, and the only challenger in this race with a real chance of winning.

Which makes the question very concrete: on the ballot, how do you separate these two Dan Sullivans?

The election office’s answer is to insert one letter into the middle of the name.

The sitting senator is printed as "Dan S. Sullivan", noted as the Republican incumbent.

The retired teacher is printed as "Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.", with the party column left blank.

One S, one J.

The entire difference between one man and the other comes down to that middle letter.

The sitting senator’s side is unambiguous: this is no coincidence.

They believe the teacher was pushed onto the ballot precisely so voters would misread it and split the vote.

In a race this close, splitting off two or three percentage points is enough to change the result.

Peltola’s side denies it.

Up to this point, it is still just an ordinary election dispute.

What makes it genuinely a joke is the arrival of a third man.

In Alaska, there is a third Dan Sullivan.

He was mayor of Anchorage, the first of the three to become well known, and this time he is not running.

He came out publicly for the sitting senator, and his reasoning was written entirely straight:

As the original Dan Sullivan, I urge Alaskans to vote for Senator Dan S. Sullivan.

So the position now is: three Dan Sullivans, two printed on the ballot, one standing beside it shouting.

Think this through one layer further, and it is actually a little cruel.

A person’s name is supposed to do one job: separate him from everyone else in the world.

On this ballot, that job failed.

The name no longer points at any one specific person. It points at two at the same time.

The thing actually doing the separating is that one middle letter — a letter most people’s eyes pass straight over.

A senator of two terms and a just-retired schoolteacher differ, on paper, by S and J.

Think about it:

If your name cannot prove you are you, what can?