Legislators advised to sue state for turning confidential voter data over to DOJ
- Mark Sabbatini
- Mar 3
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 3
Alaska Division of Elections officials defend decision as legal during hearing at Capitol on Monday; agreement also allows Trump administration to flag names for removal
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Legislators unhappy with the state providing its voter rolls, including confidential data, to the Trump administration were told Monday a lawsuit may be the most effective challenge to that action.
Alaska Division of Election officials defended the legality of their decision, which allows the U.S. Department of Justice to flag names for removal by the state, during a legislative hearing at the Alaska State Capitol. But Rep. Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat who presided over the hearing, issued a barrage of provocative statements and questions toward election officials, such as asking if they would have complied with the same request by a Democratic president.
"If the Biden administration asked for this personally identifiable information, confidential information of everyone 18 and over in Alaska, of course, we would share it with the Biden administration — if you could just say that for the record, that would be great," he said during the joint hearing by the House State Affairs Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.
State elections director Carol Beecher, a registered Republican who has declined to say if Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election, said her office is nonpartisian and therefore "it doesn't matter who's at the helm" in the White House.
Alaska turned over "a complete list of eligible registered voters" to the Justice Department on Dec. 23, with Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom — who oversees the elections division — stating at the time it was done "in accordance with federal requirements and state authority, while ensuring appropriate safeguards for sensitive information." The data for voters includes information such as date of birth, partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers that are considered confidential under state law.
The agreement also states “the Justice Department will securely notify you or your state of any voter list maintenance issues…i.e., that your state’s (list) only includes eligible voters.” Furthermore, "within forty-five (45) days of receiving that notice from the Justice Department of any issues…your state will clean its (list) by removing ineligible voters and resubmit the updated (list) to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department” to confirm that the state is following federal law."
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Several other Republican-led states have signed similar agreements, while a multitude of mostly Democratic-led states have resisted, prompting the Trump administration to file lawsuits against some of the latter.
Rachel Witty, an attorney with the Alaska Department of Law, said during Monday’s hearing the original request from the Justice Department last year "identified some what they thought were irregularities in our voter list and we responded by filing the public list with them." That was followed by the request for additional information, including private voter data, in August. "There's a presumption of regularity that these officials are asking for this information in good faith and so we carefully evaluated the request to see whether there was a legal basis for it, and determined that we were able to cooperate under state and federal law," she said.
Trump has frequently and falsely claimed he won the 2020 election, accused Democrats of "rigging" the process, and stated he wants to nationalize elections with the federal government in control. The U.S. Constitution gives states control over the time, place and manner of congressional elections, but allows Congress to change those regulations. National and state studies have found no evidence of significant voter fraud, including a state report last year that found 70 possible noncitizens who voted or attempted to vote during the past decade.
Two former high-ranking state officials involved with Alaska’s elections — one Democrat, one Republican — came down on opposite sides of the legality of the state’s actions during Monday’s hearing.
Former Attorney General Bruce Botelho, a Democrat, said "the memorandum of understanding between the lieutenant governor and the Department of Justice goes substantially further than federal law requires and, in my view, further than Alaska law allows."
Botelho said legislators should legally challenge the Dunleavy administration’s decision to enter the agreement in court, an opinion shared by legislative attorney Andrew Dunmire, who in a Feb. 17 memo also stated the Legislature should consider a bill preventing such actions by the state in the future.
"This is a bell that can’t be unrung — the DOJ has already obtained the confidential information it sought," he wrote.
Former Republican Lt. Gov. Loren Leman testified during the hearing that he has some concerns about the state’s decision, but believes it is legal. “Do I like the results? With the information sitting in the Department of Justice archives and available there during a possible breach of information? No, not necessarily,” he said. “But we have to follow the law, and agree that they made the correct call on that.”
Gray, in an interview after the hearing, said a legislative resolution disapproving the agreement — which would have no binding authority — is being drafted, but that no bills or lawsuits are in the works as of now. He said he agrees with Dumire a lawsuit to undo the current agreement would not resolve the issue with existing data.
"With this current DOJ, them saying that they're going to delete things, how much do we trust that?" Gray said.
(Disclosure: Botelho is president of the Juneau Independent’s board of directors; the Independent did not know about his appearance until the names of people testifying were announced after the hearing started and there was no communication with him about this article.)
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
