By RANDY RUEDRICH
April 21, 2026 – Alaska’s Senate Bill 64 has been debated from every angle, and flaws have been found in the ballot curing, prepaid postage, accelerated tabulation, and use of tribal ID that does not establish state residency.
But buried deep in the mechanics of the bill is a problem so serious that it deserves its own spotlight. It’s not about how people vote, but about whether their vote stays secret. It’s a multi-fold invasion of privacy because data on voters gets dissected in the process.
SB 64 attempted to solve a real issue birthed by the ridiculous ranked-choice voting system that Alaska has in place right now: Alaskans want and expect to see election results quickly, but ranked-choice voting dramatically delays the declaration of the results.
To be clear, SB64 does not expedite any actual counting process.
The addition of absentee-by-mail ballot curing unbundles those ballots that are arriving more than 10 days before Election Day to 10 days after Election Day. The incomplete “curable” ballots (ones with flaws) are set aside and may get “cured.” These delayed “curable” ballots will travel through the counting process in small groups. As each of these batches get smaller, those voters’ privacy may be destroyed, particularly in view of the bill’s fully disclosed tabulation scheme.
The bill’s scheme requires the state to release daily precinct election results with precinct of origin, daily district absentee ballot tallies for the day’s ballots received with ballot count codes, daily district early ballot tallies for day’s ballots cast with those ballot count codes, daily district questioned ballot tallies for day’s ballots received with those ballot count codes.
This creates a new and dangerous impact: It risks exposing individual ballot results.
In many smaller precincts and rural areas, this sea of trackable and countable ballots will frequently approach 1 ballot counts.
A search for a unique vote becomes highly possible in this era of data mining.
So what is the purpose of this information explosion? It’s enhancing Alaskans’ acceptance of the next Democrat election dream: All mail-in ballots for elections and ballot coffins (drop boxes) in each neighborhood.
Rank-choice voting is the simply the dessert at the end of this Democrat election menu called Senate Bill 64.
Randy Ruedrich is a former chairman of the Alaska Republican Party.
2 thoughts on “Randy Ruedrich: Senate Bill 64 fails voter privacy test”
Randy Ruedrich served as AkGOP for 13 years from 2000-13. Maybe he should go back to serving as chair to correct the mistakes he made and laid out to put the AKGOP in its declining position it is in today while he is still alive and he is still with us. Thirteen years of service is no little time. That’s laying a foundation for the direction of the AkGOP.
Ballot curing is the real problem with this bill. And the reason is simple, the democrats want all mail out voting. SB64 gives them that and it’s just one more step they need to enact their desire for all mail out voting in Alaska. The author correctly points this out but it is the real reason SB64 should be vetoed by the governor. I pray enough republicans in the legislature will see this for what it is and vote to uphold a veto if the governor does so. Ballot curing, all mail out voting, ranked choice voting. Alaska is a big mess and if the leftist get their way it will be just another California in due time. Los Anchorage is already well on it’s way to being another left coast hellscape.