Release of private Alaska voter info plays into Trump plan for national voter database

Two of the most important meetings in the Legislature this week will deal with the decision by the Division of Elections to give private data on all Alaska voters to the Trump Department of Justice.

The first is a 1 p.m. joint meeting Monday of the House State Affairs Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.

The second is a joint meeting at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday of the Senate State Affairs Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The state’s action was inexcusable, but count on the Dunleavy administration to claim this was normal state business.

Dahlstrom’s office has already tried various excuses in a letter that that most of the state’s newspapers have published, in which she claims that people opposed to her action are doing a disservice to Alaskans.

As I wrote in this space last week, the memo does not say what she claims it says.

Under state law a voter’s age, Social Security number, driver’s license number, identification number, place of birth and signature are confidential.

Other states and at least three federal courts have recognized that the federal government does not have a right to such information. But not Alaska.

The Trump administration has now sued 29 states, all but 5 led by Democrats, for refusing to hand over private voter data.

Trump is trying to build a national database of voters and seize power from the states.

“The federal government wants the last four digits of every voter’s Social Security number,” the New York Times reported in September, paraphrasing a deputy assistant attorney general.

“The administration plans to compare that voter data to a different database, maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, to see how many registered voters on the state lists match up with noncitizens listed by immigration agents, according to people familiar with the matter,” the Times said.

The last four numbers of every Alaska voter’s Social Security number have been handed over to the federal government, despite the state law that requires privacy.

This and other attempts at voter suppression can be traced back to Trump’s continual lies about his loss in the 2020 election, his lies about voter fraud and his attempt to destroy the faith of the American people in free and fair elections.

“He began the year musing about canceling the midterms altogether (just a joke, aides assured), then pivoted to the idea that Republicans should nationalize them (again, aides walked it back before the president doubled down on the notion of the federal government getting “involved”),” the New York Times reported.

The Alaska voter data agreement came from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, which is now headed by U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, a right-wing lawyer who spread lies about voter fraud after Trump’s 2020 loss.

There are many reasons to question the 9-page “Confidential Memorandum of Understanding” the state approved.

The agreement claims on page 3 that it was “proposed, made and to be entered into at your state’s request . . .”

But the confidential memos signed by other states are identical to the one signed by Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher. Each state allegedly made the same request in the same words.

Stateline.org reported that a Justice Department officials testified in a federal court hearing December 4 that the feds sent the memo to 11 states led by Republicans‚—Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.

Later that month Alaska signed on.

The legislative committees should make it a point to find out who directed Beecher to sign the memo and where the political pressure came from to have Alaska hand over private data to the federal government.

Dahlstrom, Beecher’s supervisor, told the Anchorage Daily News in December that there was a “thorough” legal review before the state complied.

That Dahlstrom and temporary Attorney General Stephen Cox did not respond to the federal demands with a letter like this one from Wisconsin, shows that the legal review was not thorough at all, just political.

Dahlstrom’s main excuse is that the memo does not allow the Department of Justice to remove anyone from the Alaska voter rolls.

That’s true. It says the state will remove the voters based on what the federal government finds.

What it says is that the state “will clean” its records by “removing ineligible voters” as determined by the Department of Justice within 45 days. It also requires the state to send the corrected voter list back to the Justice Department to “verify” that the state has followed directions.

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