The Alaska Division of Elections may have violated a 1993 federal law when it struck more than 3,000 people from its active voter rolls last month on suspicion that they are not citizens.
In a 10-page memo, attorney Andrew Dunmire at the Alaska Legislature’s division of legal services, described state and federal laws that appear to prohibit the action that Election Director Carol Beecher took.
Democratic Rep. Andrew Gray of Anchorage, chair of the House Judiciary Committee has studied the memo carefully.
“I believe the upshot is that she did not have the authority to remove folks from the active voter roll,” Gray said.
Separately, the Alaska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union announced Tuesday that it has written the state alleging its list-pruning action violates federal law.
“The letters that were sent to thousands of likely eligible Alaskan voters under the guise of election security are misleading, confusing, and run the risk of suppressing voter turnout,” Mara Kimmel, executive director for the ACLU of Alaska, said by email.
The delisting, based in part on old Department of Motor Vehicle records, included a lot of U.S. citizens born in other countries who got drivers licenses before they naturalized and later registered to vote. Nearly 700 Alaskans had contacted the division as of last week to say they were citizens and wrongly removed from the list. The division said it restored their voter status.
The legislative legal memo says that part of the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from conducting systematic list maintenance to remove the names of ineligible voters within 90 days of a federal election.
Federal courts in Florida, Virginia and Arizona have ruled against states that made similar moves within the mandated “quiet period” for voter list maintenance. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to consider the issue next year.
The memo also said it’s not clear what state law the Division of Elections relied on to remove voters from the list.
The Division of Elections did not answer questions about the memo. A spokesman said he had no new information to share.
Gray said the federal quiet period applies to “systematic” purges. The state could still remove individual noncitizens at any time based on more specific information. But he said the elections director may have violated federal civil rights law by treating naturalized citizens differently than other citizens.
“I can't speak to their motive,” he said. “Is it because they believe that all of these naturalized citizens would not vote for, I don't know, Carol Beecher's chosen candidates? Maybe. I don't know. … but I mean, I'm left to feel that that is part of what's going on here.”
Voters not on the active list can still vote but only if they fill out additional forms.
The state’s deactivation of voters comes at a time of heightened federal targeting of noncitizens. For more than a decade, President Donald Trump has alleged without evidence that noncitizens are illegally voting in significant numbers.
An analysis by the Alaska Beacon finds that the state’s list of alleged noncitizens has grown five-fold in a year. It also found that registered Republicans outnumber Democrats on the list, although almost 90% are unaffiliated with a party.
More than 100 voters Alaska deactivated this summer told the Division of Elections they were not citizens and wanted to cancel their registrations.
Some may not have registered on purpose. The Beacon reported last year that the Alaska Department of Motor Vehicles improperly registered a few dozen people to vote, even when they had indicated that they were not citizens and did not want to register.
