The U.S. Department of Justice was given unprecedented access to Alaskan voters’ private information – including private addresses that aren’t published elsewhere – by the Dunleavy administration last December, and unsurprisingly, there are several Alaska Republicans who don’t seem to have much of a problem with it.
“When the federal government makes a law, we’re expected to follow it,” said Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, during a joint House hearing on the subject Monday. “From what I understand, the federal government was merely attempting to make sure that Alaska followed the (National Voter Registration Act).”
“Your driver’s license, your date of birth, all this stuff is online,” said Wasilla Republican Rep. Steve St. Clair, accusing the state of being a worse steward of Alaskans’ private info than the feds. “I’m not against the DOJ requesting it. I don’t think they have any nefarious purposes.”
But that dismissive attitude isn’t shared by everyone.
The Division of Elections’ decision to hand over the state’s confidential voter registration list in December has raised plenty of red flags among politicians not aligned with Trump, as well as privacy experts and voting rights groups, who warn that the information could be used to suppress voting ahead of the 2026 elections and feed into the violent ICE crackdowns against immigrant communities. They have also flagged major concerns with a secretive agreement that sets out a bunch of expectations the federal government has for how Alaska will oversee its voter list, effectively giving the Trump administration unprecedented say in deciding who can and cannot vote.
Amid growing pushback and mounting legal arguments that undermine the legal rationale for allowing the feds to access Alaskans’ confidential data – punctuated by other deep-red Republican states that have refused to give in – the Dunleavy administration has largely stood by its actions.
In addition to the House’s hearing on Monday, the Senate held a joint hearing on Wednesday that featured sharp exchanges with state officials and several clear-eyed deconstructions of the state’s legal justifications.
“I believe that the Division of Elections consists of a very dedicated and professional staff, but in this case, I think the leadership made a grievous error,” said former Attorney General Bruce Bothelo, a Democrat, explaining the legal flaws behind the Department of Justice’s claims that it has a right to confidential voter information in order to ensure states are following their own election laws. “Alaska’s election should be administered by Alaskans under Alaska law, consistent with narrowly drawn federal statutes, not by confidential agreements that seat our voters’ personal information and our sovereign control of our roles to an agency whose legal theories have already been rejected by all courts that have considered them.”
On Tuesday, the deep-red state of Idaho became the latest state to refuse to comply with the federal government’s request, joining the ranks of 29 states currently being sued by the Trump administration to access their voter rolls. Three states where those cases have proceeded – in Oregon, California and Michigan – have seen the feds’ suits dismissed, with judges delivering sharp rebukes of the DOJ.
Given the state’s typically pugnacious attitude toward federal fiddling – as demonstrated by a particularly protracted battle to implement REAL ID laws – legislators have been flummoxed by the state’s decision to capitulate to the feds by not just handing over confidential data but signing an agreement giving the feds a greater role in determining voter eligibility, a combination few states have done.
“Is this a new position by the Department of Law and the administration to not engage in conflict with the federal government? You’ve never been shy about filing lawsuits against the federal government when there have been tremendous encroachments on Alaska’s sovereignty,” asked Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage. “Why on earth, when you have 53 active lawsuits against the federal government, did you not stand up for Alaskan sovereignty, Alaskans privacy and Alaska’s right to keep their information confidential?”
Wielechowski also noted that the state even appeared to have its own internal misgivings about providing the confidential list when the Department of Justice first approached the state last summer. Initially, the state provided only the publicly available voter list, and provided the full list only when the feds threatened to sue. He said it appeared that political leadership stepped in to override legitimate concerns about the move’s legality.
State officials say they wanted to be good partners with the Trump administration.
“I just want to emphasize, you know, we want to cooperate with our federal partners,” Department of Law attorney Rachel Witty explained to the committee. “By the time we did sign the MOU and return it, 20 states had been sued, and we did understand that we were going to be sued, but we wanted to cooperate with our federal partner and provide this information that they were entitled to under state and federal law.”
Witty also dismissed the importance of other states rejecting the request, noting that privacy laws vary by state and that Alaskans’ right to privacy “is not absolute.”
“Here, the state had a compelling interest in complying with federal list maintenance rules, which help ensure the integrity of our elections, and that justified sending the information to the Department of Justice,” she said.
‘A bell that cannot be unrung’
The agreement to hand over the information was inked in December but not released publicly until the Alaska Beacon obtained it through a records request last month. The list includes confidential information that would not normally be found on the public voter list, such as private residences, date of birth, and partial or full Social Security number or driver’s license number. The public-facing lists include name, mailing address, political party and how often someone has voted.
While the Trump administration claims that access to the confidential information is necessary to ensure states comply with their own voting laws – after all, voting and elections are supposed to be under the purview of states – there’s been considerable concern that the information could be shared elsewhere. While the agreement says its use will be limited to legal uses, legislators have pointed to other laws that would allow the information to flow easily to other federal agencies and even Congress.
“One of the provisions in there allows them to share that with lots of other federal agencies. The one that maybe concerns me the most is that they got to give it to either house of Congress, to any congressional committee, any congressional subcommittee, joint committee or subcommittee of a joint committee, basically anything Congress throws together,” said Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, during. “How do we keep Alaskan voters’ personal identifiable information from going to the next version of Bennie Thompson’s committee investigating the January 6 riot?”
“So, I think we’re presuming that they’ll comply,” replied Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, a Republican who has refused to say whether Joe Biden was fairly elected in 2020, pointing to language in the agreement that says they’ll both adhere to privacy laws. “If, you know, an instance comes to our attention that shows there might be a breach, we would have to evaluate that and take action based on the facts of that instance.”
Those privacy laws, Kiehl said, allow agencies to access the information.
It’s also unclear how long the Department of Justice will hold onto the lists, or whether there’s an expectation that the lists will be regularly updated with Alaskans’ confidential voter data. A legal analysis by the Legislature’s legal team noted that while legislators could strengthen the law to prevent future disclosures, “this is a bell that cannot be unrung — the DOJ already obtained the confidential data it sought.”
Bothelo urged lawmakers to consider bringing legal action against the federal government to ensure the information is deleted and prevented from spreading.
State officials conceded the agreement wasn’t spelled out as clearly as it should have been.
“I think you’ve identified perhaps an ambiguity in the MOU,” Witty said of whether the state has a duty to effectively maintain the list for the feds. “We will take a look at this, and we provide a response after we take a harder look at that.”
Some legislators just wanted to know that, now that they’ve had all the scrutiny, would they have done anything differently?
“As you can see, many of us have major and legitimate concerns regarding this matter,” said Anchorage Democratic Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson. “Many of us make mistakes, and then we fess up to our mistakes and realize we made a mistake, and you know, move on. Do you think that, because this is a gross mistake, that maybe you made a mistake in releasing this information to the Department of Justice?”
“I do not, at this juncture, believe that the Division made a mistake,” Beecher replied, though she conceded that more time may have been helpful.
List maintenance concerns
Unringable bells aside, the agreement with the Department of Justice also sets an unprecedented expectation that the state will have 45 days from the time it is notified that someone is suspected of not being eligible to remove them from the lists — in effect, inviting the federal government into a voter list-maintenance role.
But the process and whether the Trump administration would actually act in good faith to narrowly identify people who might not meet the state’s voting requirements – because, again, it’s the states that set the rules for voting – aren’t clear in the document. As several legislators have pointed out, government lists are also not exactly known for being flawless, and things as simple as misspellings, outdated addresses and other clerical issues could be used to disqualify broad swaths of voters.
To date, the state says it hasn’t received any requests under the agreement, which they also conceded doesn’t have a firm end date.
And while the state officials have stood by their decision to hand over the confidential information to the federal government, they seem to have backtracked somewhat on what will happen if and when the Trump administration orders them to disqualify specific voters.
The DOJ doesn’t, as the agreement suggests, have complete control over the state’s voting system, both Witty and Beecher told the committees.
“Our interpretation of this is that, first of all, it’s really important to understand that while the DOJ has the voter list, they do not have access to our system,” Beecher said. “They cannot remove anybody from our system. They can only contact us and say these voters we think should be removed. It still remains the purview and the decision of the division on whether or not we agree with them in accordance with what our laws say.”
Wielechowski pointed out that pledging to follow the law when they’re already on legally questionable ground isn’t particularly convincing: “That would be the same Department of Law that advised you that you could turn over this information to the federal government in violation of state and federal law.”
One area everyone agreed on, though, was that the existing rules for voter roll maintenance remain in place. People must be notified, and lists cannot be purged within 90 days of an election, which would ostensibly protect roles from DOJ interference starting in May.
Well, at least until someone finds a novel interpretation.
What’s next
… isn’t entirely clear.
As Legislative Legal has outlined, there’s not much that can be done now that the confidential voter information is in the hands of the federal government. It’s also unclear just how firm the guardrails in the agreement actually are, but other witnesses have warned that sensitive information has already been slipping out.
What the Legislature could do is update its laws to more firmly clamp down on the release of confidential information, but, as we’ve seen with the existing laws, it’s largely up to the Department of Law’s interpretation, with little recourse or even notice for people who might be affected. The Legislature or a public interest litigant could also bring cases against the state and/or federal government to invalidate the agreement and seek an order requiring the deletion of the state’s confidential voter data.
Bothelo suggested an all-of-the-above approach that included:
- Increased legislative oversight of the Department of Law, including review of the communications and advice between it and the Division of Elections
- Adoption of a resolution affirming that confidential Alaska voter registration data may not be shared with the federal government without clear legal authorization, public process and better safeguards
- Pursue a lawsuit to:
- Get the agreement deemed “ultra vires,” which means it was executed outside Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom’s legal authority, and have it nullified
- Bar the state from disqualifying any voter solely on whatever grounds the Department of Justice claims, rather than by the existing laws set
- Clarify that the sharing of confidential voter information, when allowable, stays limited to the legal purposes
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.
