Department of Justice hasn’t requested late removal of suspected noncitizens from Alaska voter rolls

One day after the U.S. Department of Justice requested the state of California remove suspected noncitizens from that state’s voter list, a spokesman for the Alaska Division of Elections said the DOJ has not made a similar request here. 

“We can confirm that to date the DOE has not received any requests from the DOJ to remove names from voter rolls,” said Steve Kirch, a spokesman for the Alaska Division of Elections, by email on Wednesday.

In December, Alaska Division of Elections director Carol Beecher turned a copy of the state’s voter rolls over to the federal government and signed a memo stating that Alaska would remove suspected noncitizens identified by the DOJ from the state’s active voter list. 

On Sept. 16, in courtroom arguments over a lawsuit challenging that memo and the decision to turn over the voter list, an attorney representing the state said that it had not been contacted by the DOJ to remove any voters. 

Under federal law, there is a 90-day “freeze period” preceding elections. During that period, systematic removals from the state voter list are banned. 

It isn’t yet clear whether the Department of Justice’s request of California would violate that freeze period or whether it would be covered under exceptions to the rule. 

On Thursday, the DOJ sued the state of California for failing to remove the suspected noncitizens that it had identified, and for not stating that it will void absentee ballots cast by those voters.

Earlier this year, the Alaska Division of Elections removed thousands of voters from the state’s active voter roll, citing data from the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles that indicated they may have registered to vote despite not being citizens.

Since then, many of those voters have contacted the division to say they are citizens and were removed erroneously because the DMV data was old and they have become citizens since obtaining driver’s licenses as noncitizens.

Corinne Smith contributed reporting from Juneau.