Alaska Division of Elections Erroneously Removed More Than 600 Citizens from Voter List
by james brooks - alaska beacon
Reject stickers await ballot envelopes Wednesday, June 15, 2022, at the Division 1 office of the Alaska Division of Elections in Juneau, Alaska during counting for Alaska’s special U.S. House primary election. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
More than 100 noncitizens were also mistakenly registered to vote, Carol Beecher told state lawmakers in a partial response to questions
More than 600 U.S. citizens were mistakenly flagged as possible noncitizens and removed from Alaska’s list of active voters earlier this year, the director of the Alaska Division of Elections said Thursday in a letter responding to questions from state lawmakers.
Those citizens were among 3,058 people removed from the list after the division compared its citizenship data to a separate set of records kept by the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles.
Someone removed from the voter list may still cast a vote this year, but they will not appear on the register of their local precinct and will have to provide additional identity information in order to cast a “questioned ballot.”
Removal from the active voter list also puts a citizen on the path to being purged altogether from the voter list, an act that would make them ineligible to vote.
After the swath of removals, the Division of Elections sent letters to every affected state resident, and many have responded. “Approximately 685 voters have contacted the Division and stated they are citizens, despite the inconsistency with the DMV’s records,” Carol Beecher, the division’s director, said in a letter addressed to the chairs of the Alaska House Judiciary Committee and the Alaska State Affairs Committee. Beecher also said, “more than 100 people have reported they are not citizens and requested that their voter registration be cancelled.”
About 350 letters were returned as undeliverable, and another 1,900 affected Alaskans have not responded at all, indicating that they may be unaware that they were removed from the active voter list before the Aug. 18 statewide primary election. Legislator calls timing of removals ‘very interesting’.
In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News earlier this week, and again in Thursday’s letter, Beecher said she will not unilaterally return affected Alaskans to the voter rolls. The division will instead send out another notice to affected voters, she said.
Beecher’s letter leaves many questions unanswered and raises more. According to the letter, the Division of Elections checked “the entire statewide voter registration list … with DMV records.”
Normally, the two divisions only compare a fraction of the list, and typically only those people who are registered to vote through the federally mandated “motor-voter” program that prompts citizens to register to vote when they get a new driver’s license.
In 2024, for example, DMV and DOE compared just 2,000 records — not the more than 580,000 compared this year, which DMV called “non-routine.”
Legislators asked Beecher the reason for the switch, which took place with no notice, in an election year. Beecher’s letter does not answer.
“It’s kind of interesting that the DOE is essentially spearheading a large-scale voter roll cleanup and list maintenance immediately preceding a primary election with major implications for the state going forward,” said Rep. Ashley Carrick, D-Fairbanks and one of the two legislators to which the letter was addressed.
Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage and the other recipient, said by text message that he was driving Thursday afternoon and had not yet reviewed the letter.
Carrick, speaking broadly, noted that the Alaska Legislature passed a bipartisan elections bill — Senate Bill 64 — that would have improved voter roll list maintenance, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed it. “A lot of this would have been taken care of with policy that we passed as a legislature in a more routine format, so I think it’s very interesting that those two things are corresponding,” Carrick said.
The Alaska Legislature attempted but failed to override Dunleavy’s veto, with two Republican lawmakers, both from Southeast Alaska, providing the key votes to uphold the governor’s decision.
