Federal judge vacates DOJ voter-roll program Alaska joined

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday struck down the Justice Department program that received Alaska's complete voter list last December. U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, ruling for Common Cause and four voters, set aside the Voter List Maintenance Policy nationwide, finding it unlawful on four grounds.

Alaska's stake is its voters' personal data and who stays on its rolls. The lieutenant governor's office announced it sent DOJ the full list on Dec. 23, including names, dates of birth, home addresses, and driver's license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Under Alaska's agreement, cited in the opinion as an example, DOJ could share the list with a contractor, and the state agreed to remove voters DOJ flagged as noncitizens within 45 days of notice. The opinion says DOJ requested unredacted lists from 49 states and the District of Columbia, shared them with the Department of Homeland Security to check against a modified citizenship database, and that at least 18 states fully cooperated.

Sooknanan ruled that the three voting laws DOJ cited do not authorize the program, that it is arbitrary and capricious, and that it violates the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. The opinion says the policy removed U.S. citizens from voter rolls and risks disenfranchising more, citing a 2006 Social Security audit that found 7% of people the agency listed as noncitizens, about 3.3 million, were citizens. It says DOJ knew of those defects.

"Behind all the window dressing, the challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote," Sooknanan wrote. "And to state the obvious, the Court's decision does not pave the way for ineligible voters to vote in our elections."

The state cited a law letting it share protected voter data with a federal agency only to comply with federal law and only for governmental purposes authorized under law. "Alaska is committed to the integrity of our elections and to complying with applicable law," Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom said in the December release.

Legislative Counsel Andrew Dunmire wrote Sen. Scott Kawasaki, chair of Senate State Affairs, in February that "it appears that the division unjustifiably relied on AS 15.07.195(c)(1) when it gave confidential information to the DOJ." At a House Judiciary hearing in May, the Department of Law said the division acted under a valid state law.

The records do not show whether DOJ ever sent Alaska a list of flagged voters. The Division of Elections said in an August letter that it used DMV records, not DOJ or federal databases, to flag the roughly 3,000 voters it made inactive this summer.

The judge said a separate order will follow. A state lawsuit filed in April for the League of Women Voters of Alaska and the Alaska Black Caucus asks a court to require DOJ to destroy its copies of the Alaska list, void the Alaska-DOJ agreement, and bar future transfers of Alaska voter data.