For more than half a decade, legislators have tried to fix widely acknowledged problems with the state’s election system – particularly issues facing rural voters – but have been routinely stymied by Republican worries that reforms might not benefit them politically.
Last year, then-House Speaker Cathy Tilton bragged about killing an election reform bill because it might have benefited Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola.
Those GOP complaints continued on Monday, when the Senate passed the latest effort to reform the state’s elections despite, as one backer said, more than half of its provisions being directly requested by Republicans. Senate Bill 64 is a far-ranging omnibus elections bill that aims to ease barriers for rural and military voters, expedite voter roll cleanups, accelerate the processing of election results, facilitate the counting of ballots for voters with special needs, establish a ballot-curing process and implement ballot drop boxes.
Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski carried the bill on the floor, noting that it included provisions from a dozen different bills proposed by Republicans, Democrats and Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy. He argued that it was a balanced measure designed to ensure fairness, not lend anyone a political advantage.
“This is an important bill that has a lot of important fixes. It’s not something that’s going to move the needle for either side. It’s just good government, making our elections more secure. Making sure elders in rural Alaska don’t have their votes thrown out because a pollworker made a mistake, or a military voter who sends in their ballot and can’t get someone to sign as a witness,” he said. “That’s just not fair.”
One of the most significant provisions in the bill is the repeal of the witness signature requirement for by-mail absentee ballots.
While the requirement is ostensibly there for security, the state has conceded that it has no process to actually verify the legitimacy of a signature and that someone could simply sign “Mickey Mouse.” It’s never been used to catch fraud, but has been a leading cause of rejected ballots for both voters in rural communities and in areas with high concentrations of military and English-as-a-second-language voters.
Rural voters have also faced issues with polling locations that either open late or not at all on election day, a recurring issue that seems to frequently catch the Division of Elections by surprise. On that front, the bill also outlines a new rural community liaison position in the Division of Elections to work more closely with rural communities to ensure that polling places are staffed and other voting opportunities are available. It also adds tribal IDs as a valid form of identification for voting.
In an olive branch to Republicans, the measure includes provisions to speed up the process of removing inactive and non-resident voters from the state’s voting rolls. Since the adoption of automatic voter registration in Alaska, voter rolls have grown to exceed the state’s voting-age population. That’s largely a product of people moving out of state and not updating their registration, but it’s also been a major source of consternation from Republicans who claim that it undermines the validity of the state’s elections.
Senate Bill 64 would shorten the time period to remove inactive voters from the rolls from four years to 28 months. It would also clarify the process for deactivating voters who have moved out of state, allowing the state to obtain information on voter registration, public assistance, driver’s licenses, and resident hunting and fishing licenses from other states.
Wiechowski said the voter roll cleanup language should be widely acceptable.
“That’s not a conservative or a liberal thing, that’s just cleaning up our voter rolls,” Wielechowski said. “We want Alaskans deciding Alaska elections, we don’t want somebody who moved to California ten years ago deciding who elected officials should be in the state. That’s just wrong.”
Regarding additional quality-of-life changes, the bill also directs the Division of Elections to install ballot drop boxes at its election offices, initiate earlier ballot counting, and release tabulated ranked-choice voting results sooner. Additionally, it would ensure that voters with special needs cannot have their ballots rejected due to mistakes made by election workers, a growing problem in recent years.
Still, it wasn’t enough for the Senate’s six minority Republicans, who all voted against the measure.
Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, conceded that there was a lot he liked about the bill, but he was worried that those provisions would be removed in the House. He also worried that the Division of Elections director, who is appointed by the lieutenant governor, may effectively go rogue on several provisions, like the ballot drop boxes and expand them more than the legislation outlined.
“We didn’t want them at all,” Shower said about the ballot drop boxes, noting that the bill says that they have to be installed at least at the election offices. “It doesn’t say that’s it. It leaves it open that there could be more. We don’t agree with the approach of having them all over.”
Sen. Wielechowski said he was befuddled by Republican opposition when most of the provisions in the bill came from Shower.
“I appreciate the minority leader’s comments. I hope to continue to gain his support, but I know that roughly 50% of the bill is provisions he asked for and that we’ve included in there,” he said. “So, if there’s another couple percent that we need to do, I’m happy to continue to work with the House to get it across the line.”
The bill passed the Senate 14-6 and is scheduled to be taken up on the House Finance Committee on Wednesday. The legislative session is set to expire next week on May 21.
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.
