Alaska’s election officials have mailed out more than 3,000 letters to registered voters asking them to confirm they are U.S. citizens before the state’s August 18 primary election — and a top elections official admits that number is far outside the norm.
The mass mailing has sparked concern among state legislators, including some who say constituents who received the letters are, in fact, American citizens.
Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, told lawmakers during a hearing this week that it looks like “a lot of old data was picked up somehow” when the division performed routine voter roll maintenance. That process involves comparing the voter list against records held by the Division of Motor Vehicles and typically results in around 200 names being flagged for follow-up — not thousands.
Beecher initially estimated the total number of letters sent was approximately 3,500 during Wednesday’s hearing. However, Division of Elections spokesperson Steve Kirch clarified Thursday that the actual figure was 3,048.
The situation is unfolding at a particularly sensitive moment. While research and criminal prosecutions have consistently shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare, President Donald Trump and his political allies have repeatedly claimed since the last presidential election cycle that it is a widespread problem. The president has also been pushing Congress to require people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and issued an executive order — now paused by the courts — that would have created a federal database of verified voters, even though managing voter rolls is a responsibility that belongs to individual states.
Recipients of the Alaska letter are being asked to confirm their citizenship by mail, phone, or email. Beecher said no paperwork or supporting documents are required. Anyone who receives the letter is temporarily moved to an “inactive” voter status. If someone does not respond at all, they can still cast a special type of ballot on election day — one that requires them to personally attest that they meet the qualifications to vote.
“It is not disenfranchising the individual from being able to vote, but it’s a measure the division has to take to make sure that we only have citizens voting,” Beecher said.
Kirch added that anyone who responds confirming their citizenship will be moved back to the active voter list.
State Rep. Andrew Gray, a Democrat, said every constituent who reached out to his office about receiving one of the letters turned out to be a citizen. Fellow Democrat state Rep. Ashley Carrick questioned whether the letters were connected to Alaska’s decision late last year to hand over detailed voter information to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Beecher denied any connection. “It has nothing to do with that,” she said, adding that “the information that we have received is specifically from DMV.” She also confirmed the Division of Elections has not received any communication from the Department of Justice “regarding any list or the list that we provided that they identified noncitizens on.”
Alaska is among at least 16 states that have provided — or agreed to provide — detailed voter data to the Trump administration. That information includes dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers, according to the Brennan Center. Alaska and Texas went further by signing formal agreements. The data is being run through a Department of Homeland Security program that checks citizenship status, though critics warn the program could incorrectly flag eligible voters. Voting rights and civil liberties groups in Alaska filed a lawsuit earlier this year over the state’s data-sharing, and that case remains ongoing.
In response to questions, the Division of Motor Vehicles released a memo Thursday explaining that the Division of Elections had come to them in March with a list of roughly 15,200 DMV license and identification applicants, requesting citizenship information for those records. The DMV described this as a “nonroutine request.” When the Division of Elections followed up in June for clarification, the DMV explained that the data it provided “included only those records where DMV’s latest confirmed status for an individual was other than ‘Citizen.’”
Kirch said his agency had sent the DMV its “entire voter list and they ran ours against theirs.”
Beecher said it remains unclear why so many voters ended up on the list this time around. One possible explanation, she said, is that some people may have applied for a driver’s license before they became citizens, and their citizenship was never updated in DMV records.
“I believe that people probably don’t realize that all of these governmental entities don’t necessarily talk to each other,” she said.
Kirch offered a specific example Thursday: if someone was not yet a citizen when they first got their driver’s license, but later became a citizen and registered to vote through the state’s annual oil-wealth dividend program, the DMV’s records could still show them as a noncitizen — causing them to be flagged in citizenship checks.
He encouraged residents to update their information with the DMV to avoid being caught up in future reviews.
