The Alaska Legislature passed a significant bipartisan election reform bill Wednesday. The House approved the bill 23-16 on Monday and senators voted 16-4 to approve the House's changes on Wednesday.
The bill is a compromise many years in the making and would make a variety of changes to the way Alaskans vote.
Alaska Public Media state government reporter Eric Stone spoke with Alaska News Nightly host Casey Grove on Tuesday about what the bill includes.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Casey Grove: Eric, what’s the point of this bill??
Eric Stone: It is a very broad bill, a big-ol' compromise. And it’s been in the works for a long time. Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski was one of the main sponsors behind this latest iteration.
Sen. Bill Wielechowski: We're going to agree on the things that we can agree on — things that just fundamentally make our elections better. And after 10 years, I think this bill does that.
ES: And the general idea, to steal a phrase from a conservative who played a big role in crafting the bill, Homer Republican Rep. Sarah Vance, is to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.
Rep. Sarah Vance: We are boiling this down to how we conduct elections so that each voter, regardless of how they vote, has the confidence that it's going to count and that it's going to be secure and that the voter rolls are going to be accurate.
CG: Alright. Stage set. So you said the idea is that it makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat. Let’s start with how it makes it easier to vote.
ES: OK, so most of the changes are related to absentee voting, voting by mail. One big thing to take note of is that the bill sets up a ballot tracking and curing system.
Right now, when you send in an absentee ballot, you have no idea what happens to it once you drop it in the mailbox. This bill would set up a system that allows voters to check and see whether their ballot was received by the Division of Elections.
And for the curing part of it — it’s not like curing meat, or measles. It’s if you make some minor error on your ballot envelope, like you forget a witness signature or make a mistake with your ID number, the Division of Elections would reach out to you and give you a chance to fix that to make sure your ballot counts.
The Division of Elections says fewer than 1,000 ballots had curable issues in 2024, and about 500 of those were tied to witness signature issues.
I should note here — this would come into effect for the general election in November. The Division says it’s too late to do it for the August primary.
Also, notable for absentee voting, this bill would provide postage-paid envelopes for absentee ballots. The Division of Elections estimates that’ll cost the state fifty or sixty thousand dollars. But Rep. Calvin Schrage, an Anchorage independent and another major backer of the bill, says it’s well worth it.
Rep. Calvin Schrage: It's not just a matter of whether or not individuals can afford postage. There are oftentimes communities that you can only buy stamps at one or two places, and sometimes they run out.
ES: And there are a few other things — making it so the Division of Elections can pay poll workers more to address how hard it is to staff polls in rural areas. You can use a tribal ID as your voter ID. Oh! And it makes it so you can write in a candidate for president — that hasn’t really been possible since ranked choice voting and open primaries came along.
CG: Alright, so a variety of things making it easier to vote. Tell us about some of the security aspects of the bill — Sarah Vance mentioned voter rolls? What’s going on there?
ES: This has been a priority, primarily for conservatives, for years. There’s a fun statistic you hear a lot — Alaska has more registered voters on its rolls than eligible voters living in the state. There’s a reason for that — it can take up to eight years to remove someone from active voter status, even if there are clear indications they live somewhere else, like they apply for food assistance or register a car in another state.
With this bill, if it looks like you might live somewhere else, or if you haven’t voted or signed a petition in two years, the Division of Elections will send you a letter, and if you don’t respond, you’ll be placed on inactive status.
CG: And does that mean you can’t vote?
ES: This is important, and it was a big subject of debate in the House: you can still vote if you’re inactive.
Federal law requires states to wait eight years before removing voters from the master list. You’d just have to vote a questioned ballot, and you’d be moved back to active status.
Another thing sort of in the broad category of voter trust and security — the Division of Elections would start processing absentee ballots sooner, and report results more frequently. And there’d be a universal 10-days-after-Election-Day deadline for absentee ballots to arrive, though we’re also watching a Supreme Court case that could require ballots to arrive by Election Day. Stay tuned on that.
ES: What were the arguments against the bill?
Some of the opposition was tied to military voters — they move around a lot, and they’re still Alaskans, but they could be caught up in some of these efforts to tighten up the voter rolls. But of course, it’s important to note that they could still vote a questioned ballot.
There was also some opposition linked to timing — you know, some folks said it may not be appropriate for current elected officials to affect an election that they are going to be running in.
CG: So where do things go from here?
ES: A Senate up-or-down vote will send it to the governor, which could be as soon as Wednesday.
Whether Gov. Mike Dunleavy will veto it is unclear. Wielechowski says he hopes he doesn’t — he says he worked with the governor’s team on large parts of the bill. But Dunleavy is staying mum for now — his spokesperson gave me a non-answer when I asked — so we’ll have to wait and see.
