Safe and secure elections depend on secure voter files

Guest contributor- 8 hours ago - 3 min read

By Marianne Mills and Pat L. Redmond

Alaskans are fortunate to have a long history of secure elections. The Alaska Division of Elections under lieutenant governors of both parties has been a model of safety, security and integrity. The rare instances of voter fraud in our state have been identified and prosecuted.* *

The federal government claims it needs confidential voter information to ensure the states are not permitting non-citizens to vote.* *There are those who would have us believe that voter fraud by non-citizens is rampant, but it is simply not true; not in the nation as a whole and not in Alaska.

The League of Women Voters, nationally and here in Alaska, has long defended secure and trusted elections. That is why we must speak out about the decision in December 2025 to provide Alaska’s confidential voter registration data to the U.S. Department of Justice. The data released — including voters’ full names, dates of birth, residential addresses, and driver’s license or Social Security information — raises serious concerns under the Alaska Constitution’s explicit right to privacy and under federal privacy protections. Federal judges in California, Michigan and Oregon have already rejected similar DOJ lawsuits seeking un-redacted voter data, questioning both the legal authority for such demands and the risks posed to voter privacy.

Article I, Section 22 of the Alaska Constitution guarantees Alaskans a right to privacy. The U.S. Constitution assigns responsibility for administering elections to the states — not the federal government. In our view, these constitutional protections have been disregarded.

The DOJ sought our voter files to identify non-citizens voting illegally, a problem found to be exceedingly rare. The agreement signed by the lieutenant governor says the DOJ will investigate the voter rolls and produce a list of suspected illegal voters. The agreement says DOJ will send the suspected illegal voters list back to the state and the state will delete those voters from its rolls. Despite her signature to the contrary, the lieutenant governor has said she will put those names on the state’s inactive list rather than delete them altogether. If your name lands on that list, the burden is likely on you to clear it up. In some states where a federal database of noncitizens has been used to cull voter rolls, mistakes have been made, leaving citizens with the need to prove that they should not have been removed from the active voter rolls. In the meantime, the confidential files of all Alaska voters have been given to the DOJ, with no apparent assurances of security.

Alaska voters need to know that their privacy has been breached. The State of Alaska’s unprecedented breach of our privacy without any guarantees to registered voters of security safeguards leaves us with questions. Why did the lieutenant governor agree to release our confidential information when other states have not? Who will have access to voters’ confidential information? How will voter information be protected from theft and hacking? How can voters be protected from misuse of their information? How many legitimate Alaska voters will find themselves on the Department of Justice’s removal list? These are just some of the questions raised by this breach of state and federal laws.

Alaska voters should demand answers.

• Marianne Mills and Pat L. Redmond are the co-presidents of the *League of Women Voters of Alaska.*