Reporting From Alaska- A wholesale invasion of Alaskans’ privacy
Reporting From Alaska- A wholesale invasion of Alaskans’ privacy
https://www.dermotcole.com/reportingfromalaska/2026/2/12/a-wholesale-invasion-of-alaskans-privacy
Publish Date: 2026-02-13 00:33:00
Source Domain: www.dermotcole.com
The Dunleavy administration has violated the privacy of more than a half-million Alaskans and quietly surrendered control of a vital state function to the Trump administration.
It has signed off on a scheme to have the Trump administration decide who is eligible to vote in Alaska.
We’ve never had a clearer example of succumbing to illegal federal overreach without a whimper.
The Legislature needs to investigate and demand that the state cancel this agreement and do what it can about the wholesale invasion of Alaskans’ privacy.
Voter registration records are public. Anyone can get a list of eligible voters. That’s not what is going on here.
The Dunleavy administration has given the background data from the voter rolls to the Department of Justice, including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
In this confidential memo the state signed in December, it gave up on local control of elections.
Most states have refused to sign this memo, but the Dunleavy administration can never say no to Trump.
There is even language in the memo from Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon that says the memo was proposed, made and entered into at the request of the state of Alaska. This is to make it appear that the memo didn’t originate with Trump’s underlings.
The Department of Justice is not qualified to test, assess and analyze the validity of Alaska’s voter rolls.
But after the Department of Justice completes this work that it is not qualified to do, the state will have 45 days to “clean” the list “by removing ineligible voters” identified by the Trump administration. Then the state will have to submit the revised voter rolls to the Department of Justice for approval.
Eileen O’Connor of The Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy organization, wrote of this agreement that it “reveals both the DOJ’s plans to interfere with the states’ authority to run elections and how dangerously insecure the sensitive data will be in…
