Senate panel pauses omnibus elections bill after questions on ballot tracking, rural data and cost

Chair Kawasaki opened the Senate State Affairs Committee meeting on March 13 and put Senate Bill 64, an omnibus elections bill sponsored by the Senate Rules Committee, on the committee’s calendar but ultimately set the measure aside for further work and amendment.

The bill prompted technical and policy questions from the Division of Elections and multiple public witnesses about how changes in SB 64 would affect rural voters and the office’s ability to implement new ballot-tracking and reporting requirements.

Nut graf: Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher told the committee that Alaska’s current postal routing and the division’s existing systems prevent Amazon-style tracking of mail ballots across remote routes, and that some reporting requirements in the committee substitute could produce highly granular data that risks identifying how small precincts voted. Public witnesses, including advocates from the Alaska Center and several Anchorage residents, urged the committee to adopt provisions such as same-day registration, a ballot-curing process, elimination of the witness-signature requirement and prepaid return envelopes to reduce ballot loss in rural communities.

“Right now we have a barcode on our envelopes so we can track when our envelopes are leaving, but we do not have the ability to put that separate tracking code on,” Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher said. She explained Alaska’s mail moves through an Anchorage hub so small rural post offices cannot read the same tracking codes used in other jurisdictions, limiting the division’s ability to show in-transit status for ballots.

Committee staff member David Dunsmore described the draft committee substitute as the working document. Director Beecher listed three major concerns with the substitute: ballot tracking (section 41), whether ranking results requirements would apply to hand counts (section 25), and the granularity of night-of-results data (section 26).

Public testimony supported many of the bill’s goals while urging stronger protections for rural voters. Aiden Nickel of the Alaska Center said the bill’s rural community liaison and other reforms would help, and suggested expanding early voting to 30 days — a provision contained in House Bill 43 — to give voters and election officials more time to respond to logistical problems. Donna Goldsmith and Marlene Watson urged eliminating the witness-signature requirement, instituting a ballot-curing process and providing prepaid return envelopes to prevent voters from paying to return ballots.

Some committee members cautioned that a full signature-verification system would be costly. The chair and staff noted an estimate of roughly $5,000,000 to implement a verification system, and observed the state is facing a projected deficit they estimated between $500,000,000 and $600,000,000, making funding uncertain.

The committee set an amendment deadline for Monday morning and said it would continue work at a later hearing. Chair Kawasaki emphasized the bill is not final and that staff and Division of Elections representatives will continue to work on language and technical fixes.

Ending: The committee did not vote on SB 64. Members agreed to further discussions with the Division of Elections and to accept amendments ahead of the next scheduled hearing; the item was set aside for a future committee date.