By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
When the state of Alaska turned over a copy of the state’s voter rolls to the Department of Justice in December, it also signed an agreement that allows the DOJ to ask the state to put individual Alaskans on track for removal from the state’s voter list.
Officially labeled a “confidential memorandum of understanding,” the document was signed Dec. 19 by Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, and U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
Alaska is one of at least a dozen states that have signed similar documents, even as more states continue to fight the requests in court.
In part, the document says “the Justice Department will securely notify you or your state of any voter list maintenance issues … i.e., that your state’s (list) only includes eligible voters.”
It goes on to state “that within forty-five (45) days of receiving that notice from the Justice Department of any issues … your state will clean its (list) by removing ineligible voters and resubmit the updated (list) to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department” to confirm that the state is following federal law.
Alaska’s signed agreement was obtained by the Alaska Beacon on Tuesday via a public records request.
Beecher and Kelly Howell, chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, said the agreement does not allow DOJ to purge voters — a term that means removing them from the voter roll altogether.
Instead, the DOJ’s picks, if any, would be placed on the state’s inactive voter list. Anyone on that list must provide ID and have their identity verified if they wish to vote.
People on the inactive list are also placed on the state’s path to removal, a process that takes four years according to a timeline set by federal and state law.
The agreement says in part that it was “entered into at your state’s request,” but by email, Dahlstrom’s office said that isn’t correct and that the Department of Justice provided the agreement.
The lieutenant governor is in charge of Alaska’s elections, and in a cover letter dated Dec. 19, she said the memo was “entered at the request of the Department of Justice” and state law.
That law, Dahlstrom said, “allows the Division of Elections to share voters’ confidential information with a federal government agency, such as the Department of Justice, provided it uses ‘the information only for governmental purposes authorized under law.’”
If the Department of Justice were to seek faster removal of Alaskans from the voter rolls, it could violate that clause.
Responding to questions from the Beacon, the lieutenant governor’s chief of staff said the state has not received any notices from the Justice Department about problems with its voter list, that no “ineligible voters” have been removed and that the state isn’t aware of any times when Alaska’s rolls were used for “pre-litigation or litigation purposes,” as defined in the agreement.
Concerns about states’ rights being overridden
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right of states to set the rules for local and state elections; changing voter rolls would represent a new expansion of powers by the Department of Justice.
Former Democratic state Sen. Tom Begich, posting about the issue on social media, said he is “outraged” by the agreement between the state and the federal government.
“That kind of federal interference threatens our constitutional right to run our own elections,” he said.
He later issued a statement calling on the Alaska Legislature to investigate the issue.
Dahlstrom, a Republican, is also a candidate for governor.
Writing in an opinion column published by the Juneau Independent on Friday, former Alaska Attorney General Bruce Botelho, a Democrat, said “it is alarming that the federal government has demanded” the copy of the voter roll with personally identifying information.
Nationally, at least 11 other states have signed agreements similar to the one signed by Alaska, according to federal court testimony in December over a lawsuit that challenged the state of California’s refusal to turn over its voter rolls to the federal government.
The text of Alaska’s agreement is almost identical to ones previously disclosed in court and by the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit by the federal government against the state of Colorado.
“We will not comply with the Trump Department of Justice’s request for Coloradans’ sensitive voting information,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, in December. “The DOJ can take a hike; it does not have a legal right to the information. Colorado will not help Donald Trump undermine our elections and hurt the American people.”
Nationally, the federal government has sued more than two dozen states, including Colorado, that refused to send voter rolls to the federal government.
Those states generally have provided copies of publicly available rolls, but the federal government is seeking more detailed information, including lists of personally identifying information that may include birth dates, driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers in part or whole.
“The manner in which the Department of Justice has acted makes clear that what is at stake is not voter integrity, but voter privacy,” Botelho said.
The Justice Department has said that its requests are necessary to make sure that states are following federal laws that require them to regularly maintain their lists and keep noncitizens from voting.
The Department of Justice has been sharing the voter rolls with the Department of Homeland Security, searching for noncitizens.
As of this week, federal judges had ruled against the Department of Justice in lawsuits covering Oregon, California and Michigan. The department has not prevailed in any case so far.
In the Oregon ruling, published on Feb. 5, Judge Mustafa Kashubhai wrote that the federal government cannot be trusted about its true motives.
“When Plaintiff, in this case, conveys assurances that any private and sensitive data will remain private and used only for a declared and limited purpose, it must be thoroughly scrutinized and squared with its open and public statements to the contrary,” he wrote.
Alaska-specific implications may be broad
The national ACLU has opposed the federal government’s requests in general. When contacted Friday about the Alaska memo, the Alaska chapter of the organization said it did not have immediate comment and was still researching the issue.
The agreement between the state of Alaska and the Department of Justice could have broad consequences here.
Days before signing the agreement, the Alaska Division of Elections disclosed that dozens of noncitizens had accidentally been registered to vote by the Alaska Department of Motor Vehicles.
Under guidelines imposed by the Trump administration, those noncitizens could be deported, because federal law strictly prohibits noncitizens from registering to vote, and appearing on a voter list prompts special review when someone is attempting to become a citizen.
The state has also criminally charged 11 American Samoa-born Alaska residents for voting in state elections. People born in American Samoa are American nationals, but not citizens, and thus are ineligible to vote.
When the Alaska Beacon reviewed Division of Elections files that were turned over to the Department of Justice last year, it found 70 people labeled as noncitizens who either voted or attempted to vote in the state between 2015 and 2025.
Those people were on the state’s inactive voter list, which was not provided to the Department of Justice.
In addition, the violent federal crackdown against noncitizens in Minnesota and other states has ensnared many American citizens, indicating that the federal action is resulting in many false positives or is targeting Americans regardless of citizenship.
Correction: The initial version of this article incorrectly stated that the memo would allow the Department of Justice to direct the purge of individual voters. It only permits DOJ to identify Alaskans for eventual removal and does not immediately prevent them from voting.
