A state Senate committee is scheduled this week to hear a 13-page bill to rewrite (tighten) parts of Alaska's election code dealing with voter registration, absentee voting, mail-in ballots, and requiring a toll-free hotline number stuck on every voting machine in the state so that people can call in their suspicions.
A kindly interpretation of the legislative motive behind the bill would be that it is necessary to reassure Alaskans that every election for every office, from local to state, is totally free of fraudulent voting and ballot-box stuffing.
A more cynical interpretation is that the bill is part of a nationwide effort by conservative groups to boost the odds their candidates will not lose future elections, just as President Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in November and just as the two Republican U.S. Senate incumbents in Georgia lost their seats to Democratic challengers in a run-off election in January.
Republican lawmakers in at least 28 states have introduced more than 100 bills to tighten voting rules, including new voter registration requirements and scaling back voting by mail, according to a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
Sure looks like a coordinated effort: If you can't win with the voters, try to make it harder for those voters to defeat your candidates.
The Alaska bill sponsor, Sen. Mike Shower, a Wasilla Republican, submitted reports and one-sided fact sheets from two national conservative organizations into the record in support of his measure, Senate Bill 39, which is scheduled for a hearing in the State Affairs Committee on Thursday.
Really, hotline stickers on every voting machine? Reversing the law approved by two-thirds of Alaskans in 2016 that automatically registers to vote all Permanent Fund dividend applicants? Limiting municipalities in their ability to encourage voting by mail? And a provision that could delay election certifications?
The senator said he does not support everything in his own bill, but he wanted to start the discussion.
At a time when the state has real and immediate problems, such as no fiscal plan to pay bills next year and a pandemic that is ruining the tourism economy, couldn't lawmakers find more pressing issues to consume their limited time while in session?
This bill deserves only a very brief discussion in committee before it is set aside.
- The Wrangell Sentinel
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