Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy today vetoed the bipartisan elections bill legislators approved in March amid an intense conservative pressure campaign driven by fear that it would empower Alaska Native voters.
Senate Bill 64 would have implemented a ballot curing and ballot tracking system for the 2026 elections, as well as several around-the-edges provisions aimed at helping predominantly Alaska Native communities in rural Alaska contend with systemic barriers to voting, such as higher absentee ballot rejection rates and polling places that open late on election day, if they open at all.
Legislative veto overrides require 40 votes from lawmakers. Senate Bill 64 passed with a combined total of 39 votes, with one Democrat out on an excused absence. That means if the 39 original supporters stick with their vote, which is far from guaranteed, then they will have enough to override the bill.
While the conservative pressure campaign calling for a veto has included many spurious claims — including accusations that a female Christian Nationalist lawmaker supported the bill because a Democratic lawmaker made her “feel pretty” — the main objections focus on a handful of provisions aimed at lessening some well-known barriers for rural voters.
As GOP writer Suzanne Downing wrote while rallying opposition to the bill (the same one with the tawdry allegations), the concerns rest on the fear that the rural Alaska-focused provisions, such as a liaison whose job it would be to ensure rural polling places are adequately staffed on election day, would “tilt the playing field to left field” and “institutionalize new layers of influence for rural Alaska in the election process.”
Those are accusations the bill’s backers — a coalition of lawmakers from the bipartisan House and Senate majorities and a few rogue conservative Republicans — have flatly denied those claims, arguing that reducing known barriers to voters is, in fact, a good thing regardless of their perceived political affiliation.
“We brought forward a common-sense, bipartisan election reform that addressed both security and accessibility,” Anchorage independent Rep. Calvin Schrage said in a prepared statement released by the House Majority Coalition. “It is disappointing to see this effort to empower Alaskan voters and ensure election integrity be met with a veto pen. Alaskans deserve a system they can trust, and that requires proactive reform, not the status quo.”
Dunleavy notably doesn’t mention any provisions affecting rural voters in his veto message, even though he seems to offer an opinion on just about everything else (well, he also skipped over Downing’s legislative romantic fan fiction).
Instead, he insisted that much of the bill is actually totally palatable. The main problem, he insists, is that the Legislature didn’t give the Division of Elections enough time to implement the bill for the 2026 election. That’s something that doesn’t quite line up with ample questioning legislators had for Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, who said that it would be challenging to implement the changes for 2026, but not impossible.
The veto is just the latest in a record number issued by Dunleavy over his two terms, during which his relationship with the Alaska Legislature has wavered between lukewarm and intentionally antagonistic, to disinterested.
Dunleavy closed his letter with, essentially, a better luck next time message to lawmakers:
“Going forward, I encourage those who wish to continue this work to use this bill as a starting point; ensure that any proposed changes comply with state and federal law; and pass any election legislation on a timeline that allows the Division of Elections to implement the necessary systems properly.”
Gee, it would have been nice to know that before the bill was voted on.
In the big picture
The fearmongering over Alaska Native voters, much like the national push for redistricting, seems to rely on outdated assumptions about how minority voting blocs vote.
In the Lower 48, many of the redrawn maps assume rightward shifts among Hispanic communities will hold into 2026, and in Alaska, there seems to be an assumption that Alaska Native voters are forever a monolithic pro-Democratic voting bloc when, in fact, they’ve shifted to the right pretty dramatically in recent years.
The measure, which was backed by the bipartisan House and Senate majorities as well as a few rogue conservative Republicans, was frankly a painfully centrist approach to election reforms that didn’t address one of the biggest barriers to rural voters – the state’s witness signature requirement on absentee ballots, which is never actually checked against anything for fraud — while also staying out of right-wing issues like poll tax-style ID laws.
For several lawmakers, the veto was a slap in the face to rural voters, one in a long history of injustices aimed at them.
“Rural Alaska is the hardest place in this state to vote,” said Rep. Nellie Unangiq Jimmie, D-Toksook Bay, in the House Majority’s statement. “Everyone who has looked at the data knows that. We passed a bill to clean up our rolls and remove barriers. It will not become law today. My people have been patient with systems that were not built for us, distances that were not considered, delays inevitable in rural areas beyond our control. So today, the problem doesn’t away. Neither do we.”
Dunleavy’s veto message
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.
