Senate Bill 39: Overdue or Unnecessary?
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Sen. Mike Shower, whose district encompasses communities along the Glenn Highway from Palmer to Glennallen and areas south of the Glenn and west of the Richardson, including Valdez, is the sponsor of SB 39, “an act relating to elections and voter registration.”
State legislatures across the country are currently considering similar bills, but Sen. Shower said it's something that has been on Alaskans' minds since before the 2020 election.
“I think you can find that there is a shaken confidence in our election system. And I don’t care necessarily about what is happening nationally. Like I said, we’ve been working on this for years,” Sen. Shower said. “What I want to do, what our intent is, is find a way to try to restore faith of Alaskan citizens in our election system.”
He sponsored a similar bill, SB 116, in 2019.
Among dozens of changes, SB 39 would establish an election offense hotline as well as a ballot tracking system, prohibit voting by fax in state elections and classify the collection of ballots from other voters, known as ballot harvesting, as a misdemeanor. Additionally, it would amend 2016’s Ballot Measure 1, which automatically registers PFD applicants to vote. Instead, PFD applicants would have the option to request to be registered.
The bill was first read in a January 28 Senate State Affairs Committee meeting. Sen. Shower and his staff pointed to reports of address inconsistencies, voters receiving multiple ballots, fraud, and recent data breaches within state agencies as reasons why the changes are needed. Committee members responded with questions and requests for more information.
Sen. Mia Costello, R-Anchorage, asked that specific examples be added to each section that is proposed to change.
“For each section of the bill, what is the problem being solved by that section?” Costello said. “Is it a problem that might happen or is it a problem that has happened? If it is solving a problem that has, in fact, occurred, I would like to have a specific example.”
Sen. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks, said people making claims of fraud or election-related errors should come forward to testify and sign an affidavit so the incidents can be properly investigated.
He said, “We’ve had a lot of assertions that there is fraud going on, but we haven’t had any proof that this has actually happened.”
Organizations including The Alaska Center, Central Kenai Peninsula League of Women Voters, and Anchorage NAACP oppose the bill, stating that it is an attack on voters’ rights and the vote-by-mail system by making it harder for rural Alaskans to vote.
In an Op-Ed in the Anchorage Daily News, a member of the Native Village of Savoonga said Alaska Natives have contended with discriminatory voting burdens throughout the state’s history and “will not stand another racist and needless obstacle to our democracy.”
Sen. Shower described concerns about the bill as misconceptions and said he understood that exemptions to some of the proposed changes would be needed.
Terrence Shanigan, a member of his staff, said that unclear policies and procedures surrounding mail-in voting and ballot harvesting need clarified.
“If we don’t clean up the ambiguous language and put some codifying language in that protects the integrity of the ballots and puts chain of custody protocols in place, we need to seriously consider looking at our mail-in voting system and whether or not we can keep it,” Shanigan said.
A scheduled hearing to take public testimony was cancelled last month, but Sen. Shower said it would be rescheduled when amendments to the bill were complete.
Sen. Shower can be reached at (907) 465-6600 or senator.mike.shower@akleg.gov.
By Amanda Swinehart
