By Michelle Bonnet Hale

I don’t know where to start. Astonishment. I am astonished that the Alaska Division of Elections has removed 3,048 people from Alaskan active voter rolls. In what can only be called a fishing expedition, Alaskan election officials provided DMV with a list of approximately 15,200 DMV license and ID applicants, asking that DMV provide citizenship information for these applicants. This expedition netted 3,048 people who had initially gotten driver’s licenses or state IDs as non-citizens. Without further inquiry, the Division of Elections summarily removed them from active voter rolls.

Once you become a naturalized citizen in Alaska, you are not required to apply for a new driver’s license or state ID. When naturalized citizens apply for a Permanent Fund Dividend, they are asked in their PFD application if they are a U.S. citizen, as we all are. With the automatic voter registration accompanying the PFD application, most are then automatically registered to vote in Alaska.

The naturalized citizen can also register to vote outside of the PFD process. Many do, and often in the very same venue where they obtained citizenship. Again, they are not required to have an updated driver’s license.

These are two remarkably clear and simple paths for those 3,048 people to have become registered voters without having updated their driver’s licenses or state IDs. It’s so remarkably clear and simple that one would have expected the Division of Elections to have thought of it before they summarily yanked 3,000 voters off the active voter rolls.

Per Matt Acuña Buxton of The Alaska Current on July 29, 2026, approximately 8,000 people became naturalized citizens in Alaska over the last eight years. An Alaska driver’s license or state ID is valid for 8 years. Those 3,048 people could easily have come from this pool of newly naturalized citizens.

Automatic voter registration through the PFD application process is an entirely legal process. Standalone voter registration is an entirely legal process. How must it feel to have followed the laws and followed the process only to have had your prized ability to vote as a citizen in your new country ripped from you, right before the election season.

At a time when the federal government, through its ICE force, is arresting and deporting and killing immigrants in this country, I wonder if the partisan and politicized Division of Elections is hoping that a large percentage of these new citizens will not even pursue getting back on the voter rolls. I wonder why the Division of Elections chose to take this action just weeks before the August 2026 primary election. I wonder what additional actions they will take leading up to the general elections.

I wonder where that initial list of 15,200 people came from and what the criteria was for that list. I wonder if the federal Department of Justice provided that list, since they have our voter rolls.

I am an outspoken critic of our current federal administration. I wonder if I am on that list. My partner is trans and changed her name and gender in the last few years. I wonder if she is on that list.

It is breathtaking that the Division of Elections dropped this hammer on so many of our newest citizens. Now, the burden is on each and every one of those 3,048 people to contact the Division of Elections to reinstate themselves.

We don’t know all of the stories of these individual people caught up in this witch hunt. What we do know is that they have lives and families and people they love. They have homes and jobs. They contribute to our society. Many immigrants also have very difficult backstories that prompted them to come to our country that once welcomed them but now no longer does.

I thought that the Dunleavy administration and the Trump administration had long ago worn out my outrage, though not my determination to maintain our country as a democracy. This purge of voters, however, renews my outrage that our government can so mistreat our fellow Americans. I am outraged at this barely-disguised effort, with no legal reasoning, to skew the vote in our upcoming elections.

We all know the adage from WWII, “first they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up,” with its ending that by the time they came for me, there was no one left to speak up. Well, in our country at this time, first they came for illegal immigrants, and now they are coming for legal immigrants. You fill in the dots. They are not going to stop unless we take action and insist on legality and accountability.

A fishing expedition? The Division of Elections knows who they are fishing for. This is nothing other than a voter purge.

For those who don’t follow authoritarian regime change, voter purges are right up there with masked police forces in the authoritarian playbook. Voter purges. Masked police forces.

This is absolutely unacceptable. I am grateful to the legislators who have spoken out and demanded a reversal of this action from the Division of Elections. I am grateful to Alaskan reporters Mark Sabbatini, Dermot Cole, Matt Acuña Buxton, James Brooks, Corrine Smith, and others for clear reporting on this gross infringement of civil rights.

The action for all of us to take right now is to vote early and vote in person in the Alaska primary election. The action required of us is to vote immediately and to not miss the opportunity to vote that our fellow citizens have just lost. We cannot afford to lose this chance to vote. We don’t know who is next on the Division of Elections’ list. It could well be us.

To vote in person before the Aug. 18, 2026 primary election day in Juneau, go to the Mendenhall Mall annex or to the State Office Building atrium on the eighth floor between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays. The Mendenhall Mall annex is also open for shorter hours on the weekend. For voting locations outside Juneau, go to elections.alaska.gov and scroll down to the “Early and Absentee In-Person Voting Locations” section.

• Michelle Bonnet Hale’s roots go deep in Juneau and Southeast Alaska. She and her partner share their household with various relatives and three dogs. She served for six years on the Juneau Assembly.