NOTN- Alaska lawmakers are examining why the state turned over confidential voter information, including birth dates and parts of Social Security and driver’s license numbers to the U.S. Department of Justice.
In a joint hearing Monday of the House Judiciary and House State Affairs committees, Rep. Andrew Gray said the U.S. Justice Department’s 2025 request for complete voter registration lists from every state was unprecedented.
“This request by DOJ has never happened before, the Department of Justice has never asked for the confidential information of voters at any point in our history.” Gray said.
Alaska first sent only public voter information, but in December agreed to transmit a full electronic file with all data fields visible.
“On December 19, under the authority of Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom, the state agreed to transmit an electronic voter file with all data fields visible, records were provided that included voter’s full names, dates of birth, residential addresses and either driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of social security numbers. Not every single state responded the way Alaska did.” Said Gray.
Attorney Libby Bakalar, who formerly represented Alaska’s Division of Elections, told lawmakers the disclosure likely conflicts with state law and Alaska’s constitutional right to privacy.
“Before I get into why this data transfer is problematic, if not unconstitutional, I just want to offer some context on the relationship between the state and federal government when it comes to running elections, the administration of elections in this country is the purview of the states. Those of you on the committee who support states’ rights would be pleased to know that states, including Alaska, maintain a lot of leeway and control over how their elections are run, issues like voter identification and voter list maintenance have historically fallen within the state’s remit. There is good reason for this.” She said, “For example, Alaska’s voter ID law allows for tribal IDs and confirmation of identity by a poll worker’s personal knowledge of the voter which aids voting in rural Alaska, where voters may not hold driver’s licenses or passports. We also have our own very detailed voter list maintenance statute that governs the way the division of elections adds and removes voters from the rolls and is supposed to determine who is eligible to vote in our state. The Alaska constitution, which affords greater protections of individual liberty than its federal counterpart, establishes a state based constitutional system of suffrage that includes provisions on the qualifications and disqualifications of voters. Perhaps most significantly, Alaska also has a specific constitutional provision that explicitly protects our citizens right to privacy.” She said.
Bakalar read from the federal agreement Alaska signed, under which the state pledged that within 45 days of receiving notice from DOJ about any “issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies or concerns,” it would “clean its voter registration list by removing ineligible voters and resubmit the updated data.
“This process effectively turns Alaska’s independent voter list maintenance process into an audit and referendum by the federal government, in which the DOJ in Washington, has the final say over which Alaskans are allowed to vote here or not.” Bakalar said, “This has the potential to disenfranchise huge numbers of Alaskans at the whim of the DOJ, a whim which the DOJ may not necessarily be inclined to explain to the public’s satisfaction. And to what use will the DOJ put this data beyond just elections? We don’t know. We have seen aggressive immigration enforcement and unprecedented citizen surveillance under this administration. I think it’s fair to say that we cannot necessarily trust the federal government to use this data in good faith and for the purposes it claims.”
Election researcher Dr. Paul Manson of Portland State University warned that federal databases used to check voter eligibility are imperfect and often return non-matches that may still be U.S. citizens due to data inconsistencies.
He said that federal law bars large-scale voter removals in the 90 days before federal elections.
Lawmakers plan further questioning of state officials and experts about whether the Dunleavy administration’s cooperation was legally required and what protections now exist for Alaskans’ personal data.
