Alaska Legislature declines to override Gov. Dunleavy’s veto of bipartisan election bill

Two Southeast Alaska Republicans flip, casting key votes to sustain Dunleavy’s veto of changes before the 2026 elections

Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, speaks in favor of an election reform bill during a joint session of the Alaska Legislature on Monday, May 4, 2026. The Legislature failed by a 38-22 vote to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of the bill. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By James Brooks

Alaska Beacon

After two Southeast Alaska Republicans reversed themselves, the Alaska Legislature on Monday failed to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of an elections bill intended to take effect this year.

Forty votes were needed to override the veto. Monday’s vote was 38-22, with Rep. Jeremy Bynum, R-Ketchikan, and Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, providing the critical votes to sustain the veto. Both previously voted to pass Senate Bill 64 and send it to the governor.

Each said after Monday’s vote that they did not believe state officials would be able to implement the bill in time for this year’s elections.

As written, SB 64 contained a swath of changes to state law that were intended to make it easier for Alaskans to vote and to improve the security of state elections.

Among the proposed modifications: Free postage for absentee ballots, a new system for absentee voters to track their ballots through the counting process, a 10-day period for absentee voters to fix problems that disqualified their ballots, updated procedures for auditing the state’s voter list to remove ineligible people, a requirement that the financial backers of ballot measures disclose their identities and a special liaison intended to fix widespread voting problems in rural Alaska.

Dunleavy vetoed the bill on Thursday. In his veto message to the Legislature, he wrote, “the Division of Elections warns such changes would be extremely difficult if not impossible, to implement securely and reliably in advance of the 2026 elections.”

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, supported the bill and the override. Speaking ahead of the vote, he said that in 2022, during a special election held after the death of Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the state was able to implement a ballot-tracking system within six weeks.

“I’m not prepared to tell Alaskans, ‘Sorry, it’ll have to wait another year. It’s just too hard,’” Wielechowski said.

But Bynum said afterward that he was swayed by statements from the Division of Elections, which said it was uncertain about its ability to implement the system so quickly this year.

“I can’t speak to what they may or may not have done in 2022. I can only speak to what the Division of Elections is telling me today. And what they told me is that this timeline is too aggressive for them to effectively put this in the law,” he said.

Bynum said another factor in his vote was the use of tribal IDs by voters at the polls. SB 64 would have mandated the state to accept their use as voter ID. Bynum said that until the past week, he was unaware that tribal IDs could already be used as a matter of policy.

Bynum said the vote was a difficult one for him and that if the bill had taken effect Jan. 1, he would have voted for it.

Stedman was one of the last legislators to vote, and his opposition was significantly less important because Bynum’s decision had already sustained the veto.

“I think they need more time to implement it. That was it, pretty much. I think there’s a lot of good work in this bill and a lot of positive things, but it just needs a little more time,” he said while walking away from Monday’s joint session.

In March, the House voted 23-16 on March 23 to pass the bill. Rep. Ashley Carrick, D-Fairbanks, was excused absent from that vote but later expressed her support. Two days later, the Senate voted 16-4 to approve the House’s changes and send the bill to Dunleavy.

The veto of SB 64 was Dunleavy’s 10th in the two-year 34th Alaska State Legislature. While prior governors have vetoed more bills during a single Legislature, this Legislature has passed relatively few bills, and Dunleavy has vetoed bills at a higher rate than any previous governor.

Legislators overrode two of Dunleavy’s 10 vetoes. Two others, in addition to SB 64, saw override votes fail. The remaining five were never brought up for an override vote despite opportunities to do so.

The veto means a sixth consecutive year will pass without a significant update to the state’s election system. Bipartisan bills failed in 2022, 2024 and now 2026.

This year’s bill appeared to have the most likelihood of success — it was endorsed by Reps. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, and Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, two of the most politically conservative members of the state House, and it had support from House and Senate progressives.

The Alaska Federation of Natives issued a statement urging legislators to support an override, as did other groups.

But many Republicans opposed the changes because they wanted a more rigorous cull of the state’s voter list and oppose easier access to absentee voting.

Ahead of the final vote, Republican writer Suzanne Downing lambasted the bill, as did other socially conservative commentators.

Vance, speaking Monday to the Legislature, said she received “threats” and “bullying” because of her support of the bill and an override. 

After the vote, she said “there has been slander and an all-out assault to discredit and, frankly, lie to the people about what this bill does.” 

Asked whether she was referring to Downing and her website, which has published a series of articles against the bill, she said, “Very clearly — intentionally misleading the people about what’s actually in the bill, what it does, and claiming that I’m no longer a conservative.”

One of the articles was from Rep. Rebecca Schwanke, R-Glennallen, who urged Dunleavy to veto the bill and on Monday asked legislators to sustain the governor’s decision.

Speaking on the floor, she said rural voters in her district need more than 10 days to fix problems that might have disqualified their absentee ballot.

Sen. Mike Cronk, R-Tok, represents Schwanke’s district and another Fairbanks-area House district. He was in favor of the override.

“If I lose an election because a little old lady in Arctic Village had to cure her ballot and have that one ballot cost me my election, so be it,” he said. “Aren’t we here to make sure every vote counts?”

• James Brooks Cascade is a longtime Alaska reporter who lives in Juneau. He previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.