Feds fail to take basic security steps to protect private info on Alaska voter rolls
One of the big problems with the Dunleavy administration decision to give private information on every Alaska voter to the Department of Justice is that the Trump administration has failed to take proper preparations to protect the data.
The Trump administration is trying to sweep up information on all voters in every state in advance of the 2026 elections. Most states have refused to go along with the transfer of private information, but Alaska agreed to hand over the data without security guarantees.
“The DOJ has provided no detailed assurances about how it will protect U.S. citizens’ sensitive private information and seems to be ignoring federal law that requires it to do so,” Lisa Danetz of the Brennan Center for Justice says of the federal effort.
One of the issues is that the confidential memo approved by the Dunleavy administration allows contractors with the Department of Justice to get access to the information. Data encryption plans are weak and there is no defined reporting process, she wrote.
“These cybersecurity failures exacerbate what is known as the mosaic effect. Voter registration lists include significant amounts of information about each voter — some combination of name, residential address, date of birth, driver’s license number, full or partial Social Security number, email address, telephone number, registration date, registration status, voting history, and political party. Aggregation of so much voter registration data, combined with other available information from commercial data brokers, financial leaks, and federal databases, offers an easy centralized target for bad actors,” Danetz writes.
By signing this deal, the state agreed to allow the DOJ to analyze Alaska voter records and have the federal government tell the state to remove voters that it determines should not be allowed to vote.
The security controls in the memo approved by the state are “severely deficient,” the Electronic Privacy Information Center says, and the agreement does not comply with federal law.
In a hearing Monday, Homer Republican Rep. Sarah Vance, who doesn’t have any expertise in this area, claimed she believes there is “robust” security measures. She should read the document from the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
At that meeting, an attorney representing temporary Attorney General Stephen Cox said the state released the private data on Alaskans because it started from the presumption that it wanted to cooperate with the Trump administration and didn’t find any reason not to.
This release did not violate the law or the Alaska Constitution, according to Rachel Witty of the Department of Law and Carol Beecher, the head of the elections division.
The Dunleavy administration has refused to release the written advice it gave to the Division of Elections, claiming that information is private. That is ridiculous. Cox should be challenged on this during his confirmation hearings.
Three House Republicans—Vance, Kevin McCabe, and Steve St. Clair said at the hearing that they saw no problem with the release of the private information on Alaska voters to the federal government.
They would never take that position in favor of federal overreach had the demand come from a Democratic president. They would be denouncing the action and rightly so, demanding that the state file a lawsuit.
The best testimony at the hearing was from Bruce Botelho, former attorney general of Alaska. He said the agreement “invites unconstitutional federal interference” in Alaska and goes far beyond what state law allows.
Multiple federal courts have already decided that the federal government does not have the right to demand this data. Botelho said the state has improperly allowed the Department of Justice to say who should be permitted to vote in Alaska.
The legal analysis provided by the Department of Law should be released, he said, while the Legislature should approve a resolution limiting the release of private voter data and should take steps to support litigation to have the agreement tossed out.
Former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman said he probably would have given private data on Alaska voters to the federal government, based on what the law department advised.
What was never examined during the hearing is why Beecher and the Division of Elections failed to rewrite the memo and add text to it to saying that the state would not simply do whatever the Department of Justice instructs. Beecher also failed to change the false text that says it was the state’s idea to have a federal review of private voter data.
Perhaps the Senate committee meeting Wednesday at 1 p.m. will get those answers.
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