By ALEX GIMARC
April 23, 2026 – Alaska lawmakers claim that Senate Bill 64 is about improving election integrity. But buried in the mechanics of the bill is a contradiction that turns one of the stated core goals of cleaner voter rolls into a perpetual exercise in futility.
Voting roll cleanup matters because Alaska, like most states has long struggled with discrepancies in its voter rolls, at times showing many more registered voters than eligible adult residents. Whether those discrepancies are benign or problematic, they have fueled a healthy public skepticism about election systems. SB 64 was supposed to address that skepticism by improving list maintenance.
Today, when a person doesn’t vote for years, the state flags them as inactive and begins the process of removing them from the rolls. SB 64 makes this a bit easier, by including additional tools: more data sharing, new triggers for identifying out-of-state moves, and required reporting on how voter data is managed. This is the shiny object the legislature wants us to focus on.
But the state voter roll is continuously replenished whenever we apply for the PFD. SB 64 does nothing about automatic voter registration, setting up a continuous loop. If an inactive voter is removed from the voting rolls, that voter will be automatically added right back on the voting roll the next time they apply for the PFD. The clock resets. The cycle starts over. This is the part that the legislature does not want us to notice.
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In essence, SB 64 makes it easier to remove an inactive voter but does nothing about the automatic voter registration piece. The legislature just constructed a “Perpetual PFD Registration Loop.”
Automatic voter registration through the PFD was approved by voters and is supposed to ensure broad access to the ballot. Convenience and participation were the point of the 2016 initiative.
But convenience comes with a cost.
How big is the problem today? With around 574,000 voters registered in Alaska, over 90,000 are estimated to be inactive, one of every six registered voters.
That’s a big problem intentionally locked into future elections.
One would question why the legislative majority that passed SB 64 wants a bloated voter roll here in Alaska. Depending on your level of cynicism, a bloated voter roll makes it much easier to commit voting fraud, especially with mail-in ballots like we have here in Anchorage or like Democrats want to extend statewide. The more names on the voting roll, the more unvoted ballots will be floating around begging for someone to vote them. And some non-zero percentage of them will be voted.
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This is not a bug. Rather it is a feature. It is also intentional, bordering on diabolical. Some very smart people wrote this legislation. They were smart enough to snooker Rep. Sarah Vance, another very smart legislator, into co-sponsoring it.
Voter roll cleanup becomes a shiny object for the rubes in the crowd to behold while the conmen (and women) of the legislature ensure voter registration for people who intentionally do not vote continues unabated. It is a great way to immediately re-register people who do not vote or those who shouldn’t. Once restored to the voting rolls, it will take years before the Division of Elections removes them again.
Rep. Rebecca Schwanke: SB 64 has far too many technical errors, should be vetoed
Instead of reducing bloated or outdated voter rolls, the system becomes a recycling operation, removing names with one hand while adding them back with the other. Meanwhile, election officials are left processing the same records over and over again, sending notices, updating statuses, and repeating work that never fully resolves.
It’s a treadmill with a lot of motion and not much movement.
This is bad legislation. This is intentional. The governor ought to veto it.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
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8 thoughts on “Alex Gimarc: The perpetual voter registration loop created by Senate Bill 64”
Maybe I missed something, but why don’t we have the Lt Governor, the responsible official for election integrity commenting or giving the public a historical perspective and the problems the state faces.
Is the Lt Gov a partisan official, then give us the partisan advice.
I am tired of Alaskan political weakness. Say something.
We need to strengthen our voter rolls. Please get rid of ineligible people off the voter rolls. Do your job be responsible and have integrity.
So the problem with this bill is that it doesn’t directly conflict with the still fairly recently directly expressed will of Alaska voters? (automatic PFD voter reg, passed by ballot initiative as the will of Alaska people)
I see why Rep Vance is struggling to grasp what it is her party wants out of elections reform. It is like she is committed to democracy or something.
If you don’t like automatic PFD voter registration, you should do like the RCV opponents and try to overturn it by ballot initiative. Don’t ask Rep. Vance and GOP legislators to undo the will of voters, you’ll just cost conservatives elections when they piss off their constituents – and the liberals can always run another ballot initiative to reinstate the automatic voter registration; talk about helping them get out the base and swing the middle all in one go. Democrats really aren’t good enough at politics to manufacture this type of situation unless Republicans hand it to them.
Solutions looking for a problem. Rank Choice, mail -in, auto voter registration. All to convolute, distract and leave open opportunities to disenfranchise. Not to mention voting in April because folks are to simple minded we are told. To overwhelming to combine local and federal ballots.
10,000% correct RE: Voting in April. We have got to do something about that.
Telling our legislators to overturn ballot initiatives (RCV or PFD auto reg) is stupid/losing politics though. Either overturn them by the same mechanism that created them or live with them, don’t end run voters – they will punish whoever does.
Stupid and losing politics? WTF? Mechanism is unimportant. What is important is that the backers of RCV lied to the voters. Once the backers lie to get what they want, your solution is to repeal / reverse by the same mechanism they were passed while the Other Side continues to spent millions pushing their lies? Did you get dropped you your head when you were young?
The approach would seem fairly simple: You were lied to. This is the lie. This is what you need to do about it. If you choose otherwise, you support people who lied to you the first time around. Only punishment seems to me should be to the lying liars who lied to pass this and continue to lie to support it. You are the Smart Guy. What am I missing. Cheers –
Here’s a softball question for you Gimarc: are you a liar?