Dunleavy proposes new limits on early voting in Alaska

JUNEAU — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy is proposing legislation that would shorten the window for early voting in statewide elections and make other changes to the way elections are conducted.

The bill would require all mail ballots to be received by the Division of Elections by Election Day, altering statutes that have existed for decades. Currently, ballots must be postmarked by Election Day but can be received up to 10 days later for most voters, and 15 days after Election Day for overseas voters.

The bill faced immediate criticism from an advocate for voting access in rural Alaska Native communities.

Michelle Sparck, director of Get Out the Native Vote, an initiative seeking to increase turnout in predominantly Alaska Native communities, said Dunleavy’s proposed change would amount to “a poll tax on residents off the road system.”

More than 50,000 voters cast absentee ballots by mail in the recent general election. Most of those were received by the Division of Elections on or before Election Day, but more than 4,000 valid absentee ballots were received and counted by election workers in the following two weeks, according to data from the division.

Dunleavy’s bill, which was introduced in the House and Senate on Wednesday, would also close in-person early voting five days prior to Election Day. More than 73,000 Alaskans voted early in the most recent general election, including more than 15,000 who cast their early ballots in the five days preceding the election.

In a letter to lawmakers, Dunleavy said the bill would “improve election efficiency and integrity.” However, some lawmakers appeared skeptical of some parts of the proposal.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat who is working on his own election legislation, said parts of Dunleavy’s bill would disenfranchise voters and have a disproportionate impact on voters who already face challenges in casting their ballots.

Sparck said in a written statement Thursday that voters in communities off the road system “are already at the mercy of time, geography and weather” when they mail in their ballots, even given the current deadlines.

Dunleavy said in a news conference on Wednesday that his election bill is “a starting point” and he planned to “continue this discussion” on election reform with lawmakers when he traveled to Juneau on Friday.

The tighter early voting deadlines could make it possible for election officials to finalize election results soon after Election Day, rather than waiting 15 days to count all absentee ballots as has long been required under Alaska’s statutes.

“These time frames have been in place literally for decades, but the appetite for wanting to know things right away has increased exponentially,” Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said in a presentation to the House and Senate state affairs committees on Thursday.

Early and by-mail voting has grown in popularity across the country, including in Alaska, since the coronavirus pandemic, when voters turned to it amid social distancing requirements during the 2020 election.

During Thursday’s hearing, Beecher said the division had not been prepared for the soaring popularity of early voting in the November election, leading voters to wait more than two hours to cast their ballots in the days leading up to the election.

The increased reliance on early voting options has raised concerns about access in rural parts of the state, where the postal service is less reliable and where early in-person voting opportunities are limited or altogether nonexistent.

Moving up the deadline for ballots to arrive at election offices would have a disproportionate impact on rural voters because it often takes longer for their ballots to travel from far-flung villages to the Division of Elections offices, which are located in urban parts of the state. Turnout in rural Alaska is already lower than in most urban parts of the state.

Dunleavy is also proposing authorizing the Division of Elections to conduct all-mail voting in communities with 750 people or less. The provision, first proposed by former Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer in 2021, would allow the division to automatically send ballots to voters by mail when it is unable to find poll workers in small communities.

The Division of Elections has repeatedly failed to open polling locations in some small villages on Election Day when poll workers did not show up and others couldn’t be recruited on time.

Sparck said that moving to all-mail elections in small villages “seems highly contrary to reversing our unique election integrity issues.” She pointed to a by-mail special election in June 2022, when thousands of ballots — disproportionately from rural precincts — were rejected by election workers because of technical errors like missing witness signatures.

Dunleavy’s proposal comes as lawmakers this year have identified election reform as a key priority. Wielechowski said Thursday that though he disagreed with the governor’s proposals curtailing early and absentee voting deadlines, he approved of some of the governor’s other proposals and would include some of them in his own legislation.

Wielechowski is set to advocate for election-related measures that Dunleavy did not include in his bill, including removing a witness signature requirement on absentee ballots. The witness signature requirement led to the disqualification of more than 500 ballots in the recent general election.

Beecher said Thursday that the Division of Elections does not verify the validity of the witness signature, meaning that ballots are regularly rejected when a witness signature is missing, but ballots would not be rejected if they had fabricated a witness signature.

Wielechowski is also set to propose a ballot-curing provision that would allow voters to correct technical mistakes on their ballots if they are identified ahead of Election Day. Such a process already exists for Anchorage municipal elections.

Wielechowski said he agreed with a provision in Dunleavy’s bill that would allow the state to pay for postage on absentee ballots. In the recent election, Alaskans needed $1.46 of postage to mail their ballots. Nineteen states already pay for postage on absentee ballots.

Sparck said she supported legislative efforts to “lengthen early voting and registration opportunities” and eliminate the witness signature requirement. She said she also supported Dunleavy’s proposal for covering the cost of absentee ballot postage and for increasing the pay of election workers.

Dunleavy is also proposing to repeal a popular provision adopted by Alaska voters in 2016 allowing voters to be registered automatically when they apply for the Permanent Fund dividend. Thousands of new voters were added to the rolls and cast their ballots in the elections that have occurred since the provision went into effect.

Beecher said that the division sought to eliminate the system because it was “very expensive.” The total cost for the system has varied from year to year, but averaged less than $230,000 annually between 2018-2023.

Sparck said that leaving automatic voter registration to the Division of Motor Vehicles is “astoundingly prohibitive” because residents of rural parts of the state are less likely to obtain driver’s licenses or state identification cards.

Wielechowski said he opposed the elimination of automatic voter registration through the dividend application. But he said he wanted to pursue other changes to state laws to ensure that the state’s voter rolls remain up-to-date.

A hearing on the governor’s election bill was expected in the Senate State Affairs Committee later this month.