In a sign of the legislative session‘s dwindling days, the Senate has rolled out an omnibus elections bill that combines pieces from other bills.
The amendments, including provisions for same-day voter registration and ballot curing, were incorporated into House Bill 129, a bill primarily focused on reducing the voter rolls, during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Wednesday. Notably, these changes were pulled from five different Senate bills sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans.
The changes irritated Homer Republican Rep. Sarah Vance, who is chair of the committee that sponsored the bill. She said the bill should stay focused on the main provision, which would set up a process to more quickly remove voters who haven’t voted in recent elections from the voter rolls, and asked that they not be incorporated.
Senators, however, were undaunted and argued that many of the provisions being added had been discussed previously and would make smart, sensible improvements to the state’s elections system. Several of the changes come from the far-right non-majority Senate Republicans.
“They aren’t new issues that we haven’t talked about before,” said Senate State Affairs chair Sen. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks. “We’re trying to rush it as fast as we can. There might be more changes we can make along the way.”
The changes include the following:
- Same-day voter registration, rather than requiring people to register 30 days ahead of the election.
- Allows voters to “cure” defects in their ballot and still have it counted, which is not currently allowed under state law.
- Repeals the witness signature requirement on absentee ballots, which became a major issue during the by-mail election during the pandemic. While the requirement was pitched as a security measure, it has never been used to identify fraud.
- Allows legislators to raise funds for legal issues incurred during the election, which is a change from the current rules that leave legislators paying for legal expenses from their own pockets.
- A disclosure requirement for any campaign materials that include “deepfake” content, such as AI-generated images and voice lines.
- Prevents special needs ballots from being invalidated because of poll worker errors.
- Requires the Division of Elections to develop risk-limiting audits and a cybersecurity program.
The changes and the legislation itself were advanced from the committee without a hitch. The legislation now heads to the Senate Finance Committee for consideration. Once passed by the Senate, it will head back to the House for a vote before it can go to the governor. There are fewer than two weeks left in the legislative session.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.