Groups sue Alaska election officials, allege the sharing of voter data with DOJ was unconstitutional
JUNEAU, Alaska — Voting and civil rights groups sued Alaska elections officials Wednesday, alleging that sharing the state’s complete voter registration list with the U.S. Department of Justice violates the state’s constitution.
Alaska is one of at least 12 states that have provided or said they would provide detailed voter information — including their date of birth, driver’s license number or partial Social Security number — to the Trump administration, according to the Brennan Center. Alaska and Texas also signed agreements when they shared data in which the department outlined its plans for its own analysis of voter files, plans to flag voter roll problems and instructions for removing voters deemed ineligible.
Several other states provided the data but declined those deals, part of a broader Justice Department effort to obtain detailed voter data from each state. Some election officials have expressed concern that the information sought could be used by the Trump administration to research possible noncitizens.
The Alaska lawsuit was filed in state court against state Division of Elections officials by the League of Women Voters of Alaska and the Alaska Black Caucus. It alleges that the transmission of personal voter registration data violates the right to privacy under the state constitution. It also claims the MOU violates due process by allowing the Justice Department to flag voters for exclusion “without any notice or apparent process for affected voters to challenge those decisions.”
The lawsuit names as defendants Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who oversees the division, and division director Carol Beecher. A division spokesman, Steve Kirch, referred a request for comment to the Alaska Department of Law, which did not immediately respond.
The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, the ACLU Voting Rights Project and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The Justice Department has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia to try to force the release of the data, according to a tally by the Brennan Center. Judges have rejected these efforts in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and, most recently, Rhode Island. A Georgia judge has dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit after ruling it was filed in the wrong city. It was then re-filed.
In the Rhode Island case, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged that the department sought unredacted information about voters so it could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship status.
In addition to the lawsuit filed in state court in Alaska, at least four federal lawsuits have been filed in the United States seeking to prevent the Justice Department from collecting information from unredacted voter registration records or to prevent states from taking action to cancel or suspend voter registrations based on the federal plan.
At a legislative hearing in Alaska last month, Rachel Witty, an attorney with the state Department of Law, told lawmakers the state had a “compelling interest” in complying with the federal request.
“To ensure election integrity, there was a mutual interest in maintaining accurate and up-to-date voter rolls,” she said.
The Alaska lawsuit outlines the process under state law for maintaining voter rolls and says there are only limited circumstances in which a voter’s registration can be quickly canceled — “in the event of death or conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude.” It says that while election officials said they would only expel voters “to the extent permitted by state and federal law,” that interpretation is “irreconcilable with the plain language” of the agreement signed with the Justice Department.
The plaintiffs are asking a judge to overturn the agreement and require the Elections Division to make “reasonable efforts” to ensure the Justice Department’s immediate destruction of all hard copies and electronic versions of the shared list.
“Rather than fiercely defending the rights of Alaska voters, our Division of Elections acceded to federal overreach,” Eric Glatt, legal director of the ACLU of Alaska, said in a statement. “Now we ask the court to step in and ensure that the DOE meets its constitutional and legal obligations to Alaskans.”
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Associated Press reporter John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed.
