Committee considers HB43 to eliminate witness requirement, add ballot‑curing and extend early voting

Representative Schrage presented House Bill 43, a package of election‑administration changes that would eliminate the witness signature requirement for absentee ballots, extend the early‑voting window to 30 days, allow certain forms of same‑day registration within 30 days of an election and create a ballot‑hearing or curing process to let voters fix minor errors.

Staff and sponsor said the measure aims to reduce barriers that lead to otherwise valid votes being rejected. Eric Gunderson, staff to the sponsor, listed key provisions including prepaid postage for mail ballots, a process to cure deficiencies (missing signature or voter identifier) by contacting voters via mail, phone, email or text, and expanded early voting.

Michael Garvey, policy director for the ACLU of Alaska, testified in support, citing a recent Alaska Superior Court ruling that left it to the legislature to establish a hearing system and Division of Elections data showing hundreds of rejected ballots that could have been cured. "A valid hearing system would address real problems by allowing voters to fix a narrow range of errors on ballot certificates," Garvey said.

Committee members raised security and operational concerns. Representative Vance asked what protections would remain if the witness requirement were removed, citing a prior data breach affecting 113,000 Alaskans and asking whether a bad actor could use stolen identifiers to obtain and return absentee ballots. Director Carol Beecher said the remaining verification would be the voter‑provided identifiers and the voter's oath under penalty of perjury, and acknowledged that, hypothetically, a bad actor with all required information could apply for an absentee ballot.

Members also questioned whether changing terminology for absentee/early voting locations and extending early voting could require the division to run all locations as master‑register early voting stations; staff and Department of Law representative Tom Flynn said the intent was to extend the early‑voting period and that the bill would be worked on to clarify statutory language and avoid unintended sweeping changes.

Sponsor staff cited Division data that in a recent election roughly 1,303 absentee ballots were rejected and about 512 were rejected for missing witness signatures; proponents said removing the witness requirement would address a substantial share of rejections and that creating a cure process would allow other voters to fix mistakes.

The fiscal note cited by the sponsor was approximately $150,000 to implement provisions; the sponsor said that amount was modest relative to preventing disenfranchisement of several hundred voters.

Next steps: Committee members asked for more detailed statutory drafting and implementation plans; HB43 will return for further hearings and refinement.