Opinion: SB 64: A flawed election bill Alaska shouldn’t gamble on

Published 1:30 am Friday, March 27, 2026

Senate Bill 64 passed the Alaska House on Monday after a full day of debate. It’s promoted as a comprehensive elections reform package meant to improve integrity, transparency and access. It’s anything but that.

The bill adds legal risks, administrative burdens and confusion without addressing Alaskans’ main election concerns.

In short, SB 64 tries to be everything at once, except doing the one thing that’s needed most: repealing ranked-choice voting. And in doing so, it risks becoming a problem the moment it becomes law.

The most glaring flaw is legal. SB 64 continues Alaska’s practice of counting absentee ballots that arrive long after Election Day. The bill standardizes a 10-day receipt window for overseas ballots and creates a new post-election curing process that allows voters to fix signature or identification issues after Election Day has passed.

That might sound reasonable, until you consider where the U.S. Supreme Court appears to be headed.

While the House was debating SB 64, the Supreme Court was hearing arguments Monday in Watson v. Republican National Committee. Multiple justices signaled deep skepticism toward state laws allowing ballots to be counted after Election Day.

The challengers to Mississippi’s law argue federal law sets a single national Election Day and that ballots must be received, not merely postmarked, by that date. It is a reasonable argument. If a 10-day delay is OK, why not a 20-day delay or even more? Where does it end?

If the Court rules in favor of Election Day being “the day” — and justices appear likely to do so before June — Alaska’s entire late-arriving ballot system would immediately collide with federal law. SB 64 would be outdated the moment it takes effect. Worse, Alaska could be thrown into emergency changes.

That would come right in the middle of a statewide election cycle. Talk about destabilizing the election that is already underway. Lawmakers could have changed the bill’s effective date, but the majority refused to approve that amendment.

The problem is compounded by SB 64’s new “curing” process, which allows voters to correct missing signatures or ID issues up to 10 days after the election. While supporters call this a voter-friendly improvement, it extends the counting period even further and blurs the finality of Election Day. With ranked choice voting, the retabulating of choices cannot take place until those ballots are all final.

Delays in ballot arrival and delays in curing mean voters won’t know who won the election for, perhaps, weeks.

Already this is a problem in the governor’s race. Take a look at 2022: the final result was not announced until Nov. 29, and the governor was to be sworn in on Dec. 5. The only reason it wasn’t a huge problem that year is that Gov. Mike Dunleavy had won outright, without having to go through the redistributing of votes. Imagine what the mess would be if there had been disputes over ballot redistribution.

This is just one example of the problems caused by delayed ballot counting. Alaskans already wait longer than most states for results. SB 64 risks turning Election Day into Election Season.

The bill also claims to improve rural access, but the bill actually sets up two classes of voters — rural vs. urban and assigns extra assistance (“liaisons”) to rural voters. Fair? How is that fair?

SB 64 also expands voter roll maintenance, including new triggers for inactivating voters and expanded use of cross-state data. On paper, these changes aim to improve accuracy. In practice, they increase the risk of erroneous removals, particularly for military voters, students, seasonal workers, and Alaskans who spend part of the year Outside. The bill says it gives the Division of Elections more authority to look at out-of-state property ownership and other such data — but the division already has that authority. It just doesn’t have the staff.

Alaska already struggles with maintaining accurate rolls in a highly mobile population. Adding more aggressive triggers raises the risk of confusion and unintended disenfranchisement.

Then there is the sheer complexity of the bill. SB 64 adds ballot tracking systems, curing procedures, expanded audits, new reporting requirements, new crimes, new regulations, and revised ranked-choice voting procedures. Each piece may sound reasonable individually. Together, they create a web of administrative burden for the Division of Elections.

SB 64 ultimately reflects a familiar legislative impulse: fix everything at once. But elections are not the place for sweeping experimentation, especially when the legal ground is shifting underfoot.

It would have been so simple had the bill sponsors simply repealed ranked-choice voting, but no, they did not go near the elephant in the room.

Sadly, Rep. Sarah Vance of Homer came under the spell of Sen. Bill Wielchowski, the Democrat who was leading the charge on this bill, and she lost her conservative bearings, as he took control. For some inexplicable reason, Rep. Kevin McCabe decided to turn his back on his caucus and join her and the liberal majority against his own caucus.

Americans for Prosperity Alaska supports clean elections and good election policy that is simple, durable, and legally sound, like repealing ranked-choice voting. SB 64 is none of those things. It risks immediate conflict with federal law, adds complexity for administrators, creates new hurdles for rural voters, and expands processes that extend uncertainty after Election Day.

SB 64 may have passed the House and Senate. That doesn’t mean it should become law.

Brett Huber is the Americans for Prosperity-Alaska director and a longtime Alaskan.