Official details remain scarce on the Alaska Division of Elections’ unprecedented election-year purge of voters that swept up many recently naturalized citizens based on “old data” — like why the state’s Trump-backing election director ignored her concerns that the size of the purge was “very concerning” — but a coalition of legislators has seen enough.
With less than a month until the Aug. 18 primary election, the coalition of 23 Democratic, independent and Republican lawmakers is calling on the state to reverse the purge that moved 3,048 voters to the inactive list. Typical purges affect around 200 voters.
“We are writing to respectfully request immediate restoration of voting rights for Alaskans whose voter registration has been canceled based on flawed data,” says a letter signed this week to Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher. “We have heard from numerous citizens whose voting rights have been canceled illegally and without just cause.”
The letter calls on the state to restore the voters to active status unless something more firm than admittedly “old data” puts a voter’s citizenship status into question. It also calls on election officials to explain directly to the affected voters that they have not, in fact, lost the right to vote and to publicly explain what happened.
“Every action taken by election officials should strengthen public confidence — not leave eligible voters wondering whether they can vote or leave the public questioning the accuracy of our voter rolls,” Anchorage independent Rep. Ky Holland said in a prepared statement.
At issue is a sweeping purge based on what a DMV memo called a “non-routine” request for the citizenship status of 15,200 Alaska voters. The problem, which even the DMV pointed out, is that the citizenship data it has is not meant to be an up-to-date snapshot of someone’s citizenship status, but their citizenship status when they last interacted with the DMV.
And because a driver’s license in Alaska can last up to eight years, that means the DMV’s citizenship status for the affected voters could have been last updated prior to the pandemic.
While these were all caveats the DMV flagged as an issue, Beecher’s decision to push ahead with the purge likely swept up many new citizens who got a license as a non-citizen and became naturalized before they had to renew their license.
And by “likely,” that’s precisely what’s happening.
Fairbanks resident Chris Waigl, who got her driver’s license in 2019 and became an American citizen in 2025, has spoken to several outlets about being deactivated, which she first found out only because she happened to check online. It took providing her naturalization papers with a date prior to when she registered as a voter for the state to restore her voting status, she said, and she only finally got a letter this week from the state about being included in the purge.
“I really laughed out loud because I thought this was very ridiculous,” Waigl, a research associate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told KTUU. “Especially since the letter just had a checkbox. What kind of verification is that?”
It doesn’t appear that the process used by the DMV to pull up potential non-citizens was particularly rigorous, either, especially given the caveats about being outdated. In its memo, the DMV outlined that it simply checked the list against its own database for anyone who had a citizenship status listed as something other than “citizen.”
Why Beecher — a Trump donor who made headlines for refusing to say whether the 2020 election was fairly won by Joe Biden — pushed ahead with the purge despite the warnings from the DMV is still not clear.
At a hearing last week, Beecher claimed the state has the duty to remove anyone suspected of not being a citizen.
“If we get information from a verified source and DMV collects information on citizenship, then the division must act on that,” she said, without citing any specific legal authority. “And to not act means that potentially these individuals would end up on the voter register and vote a ballot and not be a citizen, and so I don’t see that we have the option to not move them (to the inactive status).”
But those comments were before reporters and legislators knew about the DMV’s significant caveats about the data, prompting legislators to ask a series of pointed follow-ups and demanding a response by this Friday.
Why it matters
The latest letter, however, marks a stiff escalation of legislative concern over the voter purge. While conservatives who support Beecher have pushed for more frequent removals of suspected ineligible voters, most others have warned that sweeping purges like this run a far greater risk of removing eligible voters and discouraging others from exercising their voting rights.
And while the Division of Elections has attempted to allay concerns about the sweeping disqualification of new citizens based on “old data” by insisting that anyone who is a legal citizen can still vote as long as they prove they’re citizens. Legislators said that sort of extra step — especially in the time of heightened immigration crackdowns that have frequently targeted minorities with the presumption that they’re non-citizens — may discourage voters altogether.
“With the August primary rapidly approaching, our foremost concern is ensuring that no eligible Alaskan is discouraged from voting or encounters unnecessary obstacles at the polls because of administrative error,” explains the letter from lawmakers. “We are particularly concerned that the notices that have been sent do not affirm that recipients who are citizens may continue to vote.”
And it doesn’t end with people’s voting rights, but the state’s decision to deactivate scores of voters also raises the specter of criminal voter misconduct charges. After all, if the state believes they’re non-citizens, then wouldn’t any votes they cast in recent years have been illegal?
It’s not theoretical, either.
The state has also undertaken what has been widely seen as an especially vicious criminal prosecution of several Whittier residents who are citizens of American Samoa for felony voter misconduct after they registered to vote after another official incorrectly told them that even though they were barred from voting in the presidential race, they could participate in local elections.
For Waigl, who was able to restore her voting status after providing her naturalization papers, the whole process has created doubt where there was once none.
“Up to now I actually thought of the Alaska government as mostly quite well-functioning, but this is a dysfunction,” she said. “This shouldn’t happen.”
The letter
Signers: Sen. Cathy Giessel, Sen. Matt Claman, Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, Sen. Donny Olson, Sen. Löki Tobin, Rep. Bryce Edgmon, Rep. Louise Stutes, Rep. Ashley Carrick, Rep. Maxine Dibert, Rep. Ted Eischeid, Rep. Zack Fields, Rep. Neal Foster, Rep. Robyn Frier, Rep. Andrew Gray, Rep. Carolyn hall, Rep. Sara Hannan, Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, Rep. Ky Holland, Rep. Andy Josephson, Rep. Donna Mears, Rep. Genevieve Mina, Rep. Calvin Schrage, Rep. Andi Story.
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.
