A lawsuit challenging the Alaska Division of Elections’ agreement to share confidential voter information with President Trump’s Department of Justice shouldn’t be allowed to proceed, attorneys for the state argued on Wednesday, because nothing illegal has happened yet.
Attorneys were in court for oral arguments over whether a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Alaska should be allowed to proceed. The suit argues the Division of Elections violated Alaska’s constitutional privacy protections when it shared a confidential voter list with the Department of Justice and seeks to invalidate an agreement that gives the federal government a say in who’s allowed to vote in the state.
The revelations that the state quietly acquiesced to the Department of Justice’s sweeping demands to reach into state elections infuriated lawmakers earlier this year and played a significant role in lawmakers’ decision to reject the confirmation of interim Attorney General Stephen Cox (he was hired as Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s personal legal counsel and has continued to be involved in state legal decisions).
While most of each Alaska voter’s information is publicly accessible, the state shared a confidential voter list containing private addresses that aren’t published elsewhere for personal safety reasons. Several lawmakers and civil rights groups have argued that the disclosure violated the state’s constitutional right to privacy and may play into voter suppression efforts.
The transfer of information also came along with a secret agreement by the state to remove anyone identified as a potentially ineligible voter from the voter rolls.
Wednesday’s oral arguments were largely about process, with state attorneys arguing that voters—not civic groups like the League of Women Voters of Alaska, Alaska Black Caucus, and the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, which filed the suit through the ACLU of Alaska—were better-suited to sue the state over the sharing of confidential voter information.
“The fact that no one else has sued, no individual voter was moved enough to seek legal counsel to bring this lawsuit, I think just suggests the state’s argument on the merits is right, which is that this is not an invasion of the privacy right. That voters don’t consider this to be sensitive personal information,” said Assistant Attorney General Margaret Paton-Walsh. “I think it’s very telling … there are no voters who seem to care enough about this to have brought suit.”
Paton-Walsh added that she thought the ACLU had possibly brought the case for its own political reasons. She added that while a litany of other states may have successfully challenged the Department of Justice’s demands for the information, it doesn’t invalidate Alaska’s decision to hand over the information voluntarily before any lawsuit was filed.
“This is a very political thing. It was a controversial thing to do because people are upset about this administration and this DOJ and what it might do,” she said. “But we don’t know what it’s going to do.”
Paton-Walsh stressed that the Department of Justice has yet to order the state to remove any suspected ineligible voters, noting that the most likely causes would be because someone has died, wasn’t a citizen, or lost their voting rights by committing a crime. She said people caught up in issues due to mismatched addresses or recent moves would have safeguards to prevent unfair removal.
Until then, Paton-Walsh argued, the court weighing in would be tantamount to “writing of fiction.”
“It’s not like some part of this information is a reason for the DOJ to pick out any individual voter to do some mysterious thing too, right? I don’t think that information is somehow sensitive because of speculation about what the DOJ might do,” she said, adding, “I don’t think that the factual allegations about what the DOJ might do actually matter to the legal questions in this case.”
ACLU of Alaska attorney Cindy Woods argued that the case should proceed, noting that the ACLU and the groups involved have a long history of advocating for voter rights and privacy. She also stressed that the problems around unfair treatment of voters ahead of the election aren’t just speculative fiction but are happening right now.
Both the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security have launched voter fraud efforts, including efforts to investigate recently naturalized US citizens.
And earlier this year in Alaska, the Division of Elections moved more than 3,000 voters to the inactive voter list based largely on outdated citizenship data from the DMV.
“What we do know … is that the Department of Justice and the Division of Elections have put in place all the pieces for rapid purging of the voter rolls based solely on the Department of Justice’s desires,” Woods said. “The federal government has been fixated on interfering with the state’s primary constitutional authority over elections, and it continues to pursue manners to control which Americans get to vote.”
She also rejected Paton-Walsh’s argument that things like an address, a driver’s license number, and a date of birth are no big deal. She said anyone should feel uncomfortable knowing that their information is in the hands of this federal government.
“These are all key components of identity theft,” she said, “and putting those in the hands of a government that has mishandled sensitive information would cause anxiety to any rational actor.”
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.
