An election reform bill that sought to make it easier for Alaskans living in rural and remote communities to have their votes counted died in the legislative session’s final hours at the hands of House Republicans. Now we know why.
Speaking on a conservative talk radio show last week, Alaska House Speaker Cathy Tilton hailed the bill’s defeat, claiming that addressing the high rejection rates of rural votes would help Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola keep her seat in this year’s election.
“The changes in that bill definitely would have leaned the election towards Mary Peltola, to be quite honest,” she told host Michael Dukes.
The comments drew quick derision from the Alaska Federation of Natives, which accused the legislators of disenfranchising rural voters for political purposes.
“The Alaska Native community has been expressing the need for improvements to our election system due to its historical shortcomings in rural Alaska,” said AFN co-chair Ana Hoffman in a prepared statement. “The state legislature should share this concern and work towards improvements, not disenfranchisement, especially considering their commitment to upholding and defending the constitution.”
At the heart of the issue is the state’s witness signature requirement on by-mail absentee ballots. Meant ostensibly as an anti-fraud measure, the signatures are not actually cross-checked and state officials have admitted that it’s never been used to identify fraud.
It has, however, resulted in the rejection of thousands of rural ballots.
When Alaska held a special by-mail election in 2022 to fill the late U.S. Rep. Don Young’s seat in Congress, voters in rural communities were much more likely to see their ballots rejected than those in other parts of the state due to the witness signature requirement. While the statewide rejection rate for by-mail ballots hovered around 4.5%, rejection rates in rural communities sat around 14%. That meant about one in every eight ballots cast from rural Alaska weren’t counted due to a requirement that serves no meaningful purpose.
When the witness signature requirement was put on hold in 2020 due to the pandemic, ballot rejection rates plummeted throughout the state — including rural communities.
Those two elections have fueled interest in repealing the witness signature requirement altogether, and the idea gained traction when the Senate added it to a House-backed election reform bill in the final days of the session.
Despite last-minute efforts by Democrats to force a vote on the issue, House Republicans ultimately blocked the measure from advancing on a 20-20 vote.
The witness signature requirement is just one of many challenges rural voters have had to voting in recent years. Several polling places opened late or didn’t open during this year’s primary election, an ongoing issue that advocates say has frustratingly continued.
“It is imperative that we work towards creating a fair and inclusive electoral process that upholds the rights of all Alaskans to participate in shaping the future of our state,” said AFN President Benjamin Mallott in the prepared statement. “Voting reforms are necessary to ensure a fair and inclusive electoral process, and we are hopeful that we can make meaningful progress toward that goal with the Alaska Legislature in this next session.”
For her part, Speaker Tilton said that some reforms are needed, but the only “reform” she highlighted on the radio show was the repeal of automatic voter registration in Alaska. The program, approved by voters via initiative in 2016, automatically registers people when they apply for dividends.
She said it’s “a bad thing that needs to go away.”
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.
