Alaska removes 3,048 from voter rolls due to DMV data error ahead of primary

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Alaska Removes Citizens From Voter Rolls Just Before Midterms

Publication Date: 2026-07-24

Alaska’s effort to appease President Trump’s claims that noncitizens are voting has ended up punishing U.S. citizens.

The Alaska Beacon reported Thursday that the state removed 3,048 people from its active voter list. Many of those removed were citizens who were accidentally flagged by the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles and now must provide extra identification to vote.

Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, told state legislators on Wednesday that “old data” was the reason for the mistake. She said she was not sure why so many Alaska residents were labeled as noncitizens.

How the Error Occurred

• When Alaskans apply for a driver’s license, they are asked if they want to register to vote and if they are a U.S. citizen.
• State election officials cross-check the DMV’s records with voter rolls each year.
• According to Beecher, “more like 200 names” are typically tagged for extra scrutiny.

The latest check, however, found “a lot more names than we were expecting,” Beecher said.

“We believe that when we did the match, that a lot of old data was picked up somehow. So we’re still ferreting through that,” Beecher said. She added that although the number of flagged names was “very concerning,” the state has to take them seriously.

“It is not disenfranchising the individual from being able to vote, but it’s a measure the division has to take to make sure that we only have citizens voting.”

The State’s Response

Beecher said that those who were flagged will receive a letter asking if they are citizens. They need only to contact the state Division of Elections by email, phone, or regular mail and state they are a citizen.

“We don’t require paperwork. We’re not requiring documentation. Nothing like that,” she added.

Citizens Disagree

Eligible U.S. citizens who were removed from the voter rolls disagree with the state’s characterization.

Chris Waigl, who got her driver’s license in 2019 and became a U.S. citizen in 2025, was alarmed to check her registration status last weekend and find that she was listed as “inactive—non citizen.”

“They were able to correct it there and then after I sent in copies of my naturalization certificate with a date before my voter registration date,” she told the Beacon via email. “It’s just ridiculous.”

Waigl said she reached out to four others who became citizens at the same time as her. Three of them were removed from the voter rolls. One of them told the Beacon by phone that they were removed despite registering in person at a DMV office and presenting citizenship information.

Some people told the Beacon that they have not been able to reach the Division of Elections by phone, and that mailboxes are full.

Upcoming Elections and Federal Database Issues

Alaska’s primary elections are less than a month away on August 18, and the general election is less than two months away in November. The state’s lieutenant governor, Nancy Dahlstrom, is in charge of the elections office and has told state officials to comply with the Trump administration’s requests to turn over copies of Alaska’s voter rolls for a national voter database.

That national database, run by the Department of Homeland Security, has been found to be full of errors, mistakenly flagging U.S. citizens. One month ago, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan struck it down, saying that the government “haphazardly” created a database of millions of Americans it knew was “inaccurate.”

“States have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information,” Sooknanan wrote in a 75-page ruling. “All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”

Between the Trump administration and zealous state governments like Alaska’s, thousands of U.S. citizens may not be able to vote in this year’s midterms.

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