The Alaska Division of Elections’ decision to hand over the state’s confidential voter file to the Trump administration as part of its effort to create a sweeping national voter registry ahead of the 2026 elections was illegal on a litany of grounds, a new lawsuit argues.
The lawsuit was brought by the ACLU of Alaska, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the ACLU Voting Rights Project on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Alaska and the Alaska Black Caucus. The suit, filed in state Superior Court, charges that the Division of Elections and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom’s decision to hand over the voter file violated the Alaska Constitution’s privacy clause and seeks to overturn an agreement that would grant the feds an unprecedented say in who’s allowed to vote.
“Protecting voters’ confidential information is a non-partisan issue,” said Marianne Mills, the League of Women Voters of Alaska co-president, in a prepared statement. “Alaskan voters must be able to trust that the agency tasked with administering our statewide elections is doing everything in its power to protect Alaskans’ privacy and lawful right to vote.”
More: Read the ACLU’s filing
Under the Dunleavy administration, Alaska was one of the few states to fully comply with the Department of Justice’s sweeping request for confidential voter data by sending the full, unredacted list in December 2025. That list includes information that’s not released to the public and is typically considered highly private, such as private residences, dates of birth, and partial or full Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers.
Many states have refused to hand over their voter lists, including several ruby-red states.
And not only that, but the state signed onto a secretive agreement with the federal government that would invite the Department of Justice to identify people who it doesn’t believe are eligible to vote – likely with some sort of opaque AI system – and the state would be compelled to listen and “fix” the voter rolls by removing them.
While officials claim there’s more nuance to the process – arguing that they still plan to follow the law on deactivating identified voters, which includes notifying them – that nuance isn’t reflected in the agreement.
Ostensibly, the entire scheme is to ensure states are conducting regular voter roll maintenance to find and deactivate ineligible voters, but advocates have warned that the Trump administration could use the information for more sweeping and cruel purposes, potentially feeding into the brutal ICE crackdowns, voter suppression efforts (which will likely involve ICE) and other unknown issues, which many fear includes the fast-growing surveillance network of Americans.
The suit argues that Alaskans’ right to privacy under the Alaska Constitution – a particularly strong state privacy protection that has been regularly interpreted to also protect the right to an abortion – should have barred the release of the information.
“Sharing unredacted voter registration data not only invades the privacy of Alaskans but also threatens to silence the voices of those who have fought tirelessly for their right to vote,” said Yolandous “Doyle” Williams, Board Chairman for the Alaska Black Caucus. “The Alaska Black Caucus is deeply concerned that the actions of the Alaska Division of Elections undermine the very core of our democracy by risking the disenfranchisement of voters.”
At a hearing last month, Department of Law attorney Rachel Witty told lawmakers that the right to privacy “is not absolute” and that the state had overriding interests in listening to the federal government’s frankly novel and largely unfounded legal interpretations justifying the sweeping request of information.
“I just want to emphasize, you know, we want to cooperate with our federal partners,” she said. “We wanted to cooperate with our federal partner and provide this information that they were entitled to under state and federal law.”
That’s an interpretation that just about everyone outside the Alaska Department of Law and Trump’s DOJ disputes, noting that ignoring constitutional rights must be done on an extremely narrow and well-justified purpose. They say that state voter roll maintenance – something that under the U.S. Constitution is a power reserved to the states – can be done without the federal government accessing such sweeping information about Alaskans.
In three states, Michigan, Oregon and California, judges have already ruled against the federal government, finding that the requests themselves were illegal.
As for the agreement that would give the DOJ the power to identify individual Alaskans and order their removal from the voter rolls, lawmakers and election advocates have warned that it also crosses a bright line in state law. The lawsuit seeks to overturn the agreement by arguing that it was based on flawed legal reasoning and effectively creates a new method to cancel an Alaskan’s voter registration that is not prescribed by law.
“As a matter of law, the Division cannot comply with the terms of the (agreement) without violating the statutory requirements on voter registration list management—unless the only ‘ineligible voters’ DOJ identifies are deceased, presumed deceased, or have been convicted of a felony crime of moral turpitude,” the suit argues. “By committing to remove individuals from the voter registration list at the behest of DOJ, on grounds and subject to procedures that are not authorized (under state law), (the Division of Elections officials) acted outside of the scope of their authority.”
For many critics, the Division of Elections’ decision to fully acquiesce to the federal government’s demands not only raises issues around privacy and voting rights but also about the long-standing political idea that Alaska needs to rigorously defend itself from federal overreach. At the legislative hearing last month, several progressive lawmakers asked derisively whether the Dunleavy administration had adopted a policy of conflict avoidance with the feds — noting that the administration has regularly requested money to sue the federal government over issues that favor private resource development.
In his statement, ACLU of Alaska Legal Director Eric Glatt echoed that sentiment, arguing that the state’s actions had violated many closely held Alaska values.
“The right to vote and our right to privacy are two core values held dear by Alaskans. Rather than fiercely defending the rights of Alaska’s voters, our Division of Elections acceded to federal overreach,” he said. “Now, we are asking the court to step in and ensure that DOE upholds its constitutional and legal obligations to Alaskans.”