House Bill 21 proposes allowing Alaskans to pre-register to vote once they turn 16, a move that supporters say would help increase the engagement of young Alaskans and make it easier for them to become voters once they turn 18.
However, not everyone is a fan of the measure, including Homer Republican Rep. Sarah Vance, a legislator who once took to social media to chastise public school students after they wrote about her calling for higher education funding. Vance questioned the bill’s merits during a hearing in the House State Affairs Committee this week, suggesting without evidence that it would lead to fraud and undermine confidence in the results.
“What kind of assurance would you give by adding more people to the rolls who are not eligible to vote that they would not be getting these ballots?” she asked during the hearing.
Vance made headlines in 2019 after she took to social media with a seven-minute-long video bashing Kenai Peninsula Borough students over a letter-writing project to state legislators. Among her complaints, Vance excoriated the students for failing to use her proper title, a point that she said illustrated the poor quality of schools.
“I’d like to have your input if you feel that our education dollars are giving the output you would like to see,” she said in the now-deleted video (a copy of which you can find here). “A lot of my concern in reading these is none of them have addressed me as Representative or Representative Vance, not a one.”
While the legislation simply proposes allowing Alaskans to pre-register to vote once they turn 16 and requiring that they reply to a mailer sent close to their 18th birthday to confirm their address and registration, Vance spent much of the meeting suggesting it would contribute to the “messy” voter rolls that conservatives like her have been fueling.
Alaska’s voter rolls do have more voters than eligible Alaskans, but that’s in large part because of the state’s automatic voter registration program, the transient nature of the state and the time it takes to deactivate someone from the rolls. There has been no evidence it has contributed to fraud, but it’s become a favorite target for Republicans like Vance to explain away stinging electoral losses in recent years.
“It seems like it’s giving more speculation to people who are already concerned about adding more names to the list when there’s an effort to have it as clean as possible so that there’s no confusion, no speculation of error,” said Vance of the legislation. “What is your overall purpose of this bill?”
Rep. Andi Story, the Juneau Democrat who sponsored HB 21, said the goal is to make it easier for young people to become engaged in the electoral process and align with in-school lessons on civics and voting.
“The whole intent for this bill, like the other states who have gone to do this, is to make students more aware while they are home with their families and in school about the voting process, and what that means is we live in a democracy,” Story said. “So, to me, I see it as involving the youth. Other states that have used this do see an increase in younger people voting. And that’s what we want as people involved in our democracy, being aware of current events and just embracing the system that we have here.”
At the hearing, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher also had to explain that the pre-registration list would be separate from the regular voter roll. Alaskans who pre-register would still have to confirm their address as they turn 18 to activate their registration and be moved onto the regular voting roll. They wouldn’t automatically be added to the rolls.
The committee also heard from Eagle River student Madison Arreola, a representative from Anchorage Youth Votes, who said that the measure would go a long way to building engagement of young people and help drive politics and legislation that is more reflective of their experiences.
“Many people, which I’ve even felt before, feel that their vote doesn’t matter because they think, as a minority, that their vote will not add much to the numbers,” she said. “If we allow 16-year-olds to pre-register to vote that means it’s more likely that youth will feel that the Legislature actually cares to make laws surrounding their life.”
“Now, the purpose of this bill is a value here. What do you value? We value democracy and democracy first,” she said. “We want our voice represented.”
The House State Affairs Commitee is set to hear public testimony on the bill today at its 3:15 p.m. hearing.
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 Bluesky.
