Alaska’s voter privacy shouldn’t be compromised by unwarranted federal demands

(State of Alaska Division of Elections photo)

By Bruce Botelho

In late December Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom handed over Alaska’s entire voter registration database to the U.S. Department of Justice to comply with an August demand issued by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon to provide ”… the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number.”

It is alarming that the federal government has demanded such records. The National Voter Registration Act, which was passed in 1993 and expands voters’ rights, does not entitle the federal government to collect data on voters or to do voter list maintenance for the states. Only the states have the authority to do that. 

Furthermore, the Privacy Act of 1974 makes it a crime for the federal government to collect data on individual Americans without informing Congress and the people exactly how it’s going to work.  

More shockingly, the Dunleavy administration complied with the request — supposedly after lengthy review by the attorney general’s office. The attorney general should lay out plainly his basis for the lieutenant governor’s action, particularly in light of Alaska’s explicit right to privacy enshrined in Article I, Section 22 of our state constitution which, at the least, complements federal laws respecting data privacy.

Spawned by the president’s insistence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, his administration has zealously sought to discredit the outcome which is otherwise universally accepted to have been largely devoid of election misconduct. The manner in which the Department of Justice has acted makes clear that what is at stake is not voter integrity, but voter privacy. The Department of Justice has demanded unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states, including names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s licenses and partial Social Security numbers, claiming it needs this information to enforce federal voting and immigration laws. It has never publicly explained why that level of detail is necessary or what safeguards will prevent misuse of that data once it is centralized in federal hands. 

Other states refused to provide the data — and fought back in court. On Jan. 15, a federal judge in California dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking that state’s full, unredacted voter registration database. The judge held that the federal government had no legal authority to demand such sweeping access to confidential voter information and warned that the request “threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy.” Concentrating that much sensitive data in Washington, the court noted, could deter people — especially political minorities and working-class immigrants — from registering or casting a ballot at all. 

On Feb. 5, Oregon won a similar battle, but with an even sharper warning. There the federal judge concluded that the department “can no longer” be presumed to be acting in good faith in its nationwide voter data campaign. The court pointed to a letter from the attorney general that linked these voterroll demands to the deployment of immigration agents in Minnesota, casting “serious doubt” on the true purpose of seeking these lists. The judge described the Justice Department’s stated assurances about limited use and privacy as “chilling” in light of public statements about building a nationwide database of confidential voter information for immigration enforcement and other unprecedented uses.

Together, those cases stand for a simple proposition: states have both the authority and the responsibility to protect their voters from unnecessary federal surveillance. Alaska’s position is even stronger because our constitution does something most state constitutions do not: it explicitly protects both personal autonomy and the right to shield personal information from disclosure by the government. 

Our voter rolls are not a tool for immigration enforcement. Nor should they become the raw material for a federal database whose purposes keep shifting with each press release. When people believe that registering to vote may put their names, addresses, and identifying numbers into the hands of agencies more focused on deportation than democracy, some will quietly choose not to register at all — and that is a loss Alaska cannot afford. In a state that already struggles with low turnout in some communities and longstanding disparities in political power, the last thing we should do is hand this federal administration one more way to scare people away from the ballot box. 

Under the terms of the agreement between the division of elections and the Department of Justice, the state is obligated  “… within forty-five (45) days of receiving…notice from the Justice Department  of any issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns…[to] clean its VRL/Data by removing ineligible voters and resubmit the updated VRL/Data to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to verify proper list maintenance has occurred by your state pursuant to the NVRA and HAVA.” Here the lieutenant governor must reassert her authority to be the sole judge of whose names should be purged from Alaska’s voter rolls.

The right to privacy was not added to our constitution as decoration; it was written to guarantee that government would be accountable to the people, not the other way around. By yielding voter information without transparent purpose, enforceable limits, or serious public debate, the lieutenant governor has lost sight of that promise. Alaska should immediately revisit this decision, assert its constitutional prerogatives, and join those states — like California and Oregon — that have already drawn a clear line between voter registration and federal overreach. Protecting the privacy of Alaskan voters is not defiance. It is the state doing exactly what our constitution demands. 

• Bruce Botelho is a former Juneau mayor and Alaska attorney general, and president of the Juneau Independent’s board of directors.