Alaska election officials are facing a state-court lawsuit filed by voting and civil rights groups that challenges how the officials shared the state’s voter registration data with the U.S. Department of Justice, arguing it violates privacy and due-process protections in Alaska’s constitution.
The complaint, filed Wednesday in Alaska state court, names Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who oversees the elections division, and Director Carol Beecher, according to the lawsuit described by the Associated Press. The League of Women Voters of Alaska and the Alaska Black Caucus are among the organizations bringing the case, the report said.
The plaintiffs argue that the state’s sharing of the full voter registration list with federal authorities is unconstitutional. The lawsuit also targets a memorandum of understanding the groups say allows the Justice Department to flag voters for removal “without any apparent notice or process for impacted voters to challenge those decisions,” the AP report said.
In describing the legal basis for its challenge, the lawsuit says Alaska law sets out limited circumstances under which a voter’s registration can be promptly canceled, including “upon death or conviction of a felony involving moral turpitude.” The filing argues that election officials’ stated approach—removing voters only “to the extent allowed by state and federal law”—conflicts with the “plain language” of the agreement with the Justice Department, the AP report said.
The plaintiffs are asking a judge to void the memorandum of understanding and require the elections division to make “reasonable efforts” to ensure the Justice Department destroys both hard copies and electronic versions of the voter list it received, according to the report. Eric Glatt, legal director for the ACLU of Alaska, said in a statement quoted by the AP that the division “acceded to federal overreach,” and that the groups are asking the court to require the Department of Elections to uphold its constitutional and legal obligations to Alaskans.
The Associated Press reported that Sam Curtis, a spokesperson for the state Department of Law, said it would be “premature to comment on specific claims raised in the lawsuit.” Curtis also said the department previously explained in public hearings that state law “expressly permits the sharing of this information for authorized governmental purposes,” adding that “That statute is on the books, and we will defend it,” the AP report said.
According to the AP, Alaska is among at least a dozen states that have provided, or said they would provide, detailed voter information to the Trump administration, including data elements such as date of birth and a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number, based on the Brennan Center. The report also said Alaska and Texas signed agreements under which the Justice Department outlined plans for analysis of voter files, plans to flag voter list issues, and directions for removing voters deemed ineligible.
The federal government has pursued litigation seeking access to unredacted voter registration data in multiple states, the AP report said. It cited judges rejecting Justice Department efforts in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Rhode Island, and said the Justice Department has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia. The AP report also said that in Rhode Island, Justice Department attorneys acknowledged seeking unredacted voter information so it could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to check citizenship status.
In addition to the Alaska state-court case, the AP report said at least four federal lawsuits have been filed seeking to stop the Justice Department from collecting information from unredacted voter registration files or to prevent states from taking steps to cancel or suspend people’s voter registrations based on the federal project.