A legislative hearing scrutinizing unprecedented actions by state elections officials against U.S. Senate candidate Dan J. Sullivan escalated into a new controversy Wednesday with the revelation that 3,500 people have been removed from active voter rolls and asked to verify they are U.S. citizens.
Letters sent to those people from the Alaska Division of Elections state it has “received information from the Alaska Department of Motor Vehicles that you may not be a citizen.” Carol Beecher, the division’s director, told legislators the people notified have been placed on an inactive list and told they need to confirm their citizenship.
The notifications are part of a quarterly voter maintenance process in collaboration with DMV that typically results in about 200 notifications, Beecher said. However, DMV, in a memo issued Thursday, stated the elections division made a “a non-routine request” in March specifically for citizenship information involving 15,200 driver’s license and identification applicants.
Beecher told lawmakers the 3,500 people whose citizenship was flagged “was a lot more names than we were expecting” and “we’re not completely sure.”
People getting such notices simply need to contact the elections division to verify their citizenship, Beecher said. Residents who don’t respond can still cast a questioned ballot subject to verification.
The disclosure added partisan fuel to a series of actions by elections officials during the past several months that include decertifying Sullivan’s candidacy — which was quickly reversed by the Alaska Supreme Court — and agreeing to let the Trump administration flag people’s names for removal using confidential voter data provided by the state.
Rep. Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat co-chairing Wednesday’s joint hearing by the House judiciary and state affairs committees, said his office is being contacted by numerous legal citizens who have received the letter challenging their status.
“I have a lot of questions about that and I have colleagues who have also been getting reached out to by constituents who are also receiving these letters, where people are having to go prove their citizenship in order to vote,” he said. “This is a matter of urgency.”
Beecher, a Republican who has previously declined to say if Joe Biden fairly defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, told lawmakers Wednesday the recent citizen notices are not related to the voter data turned over to the U.S. Department of Justice.
“We have not heard from the DOJ regarding any list,” she said.
The memo from DMV states it is required to provide voter registration information to the elections division when a person opts for such registration when obtaining a license or ID. The request by elections officials for citizenship information departed from that norm.
“The data provided to Elections in March included only those records where DMV’s latest confirmed status for an individual was other than ‘Citizen,’” the memo notes.
The Trump administration is attempting a multitude of actions to alter and take control of election procedures now handled by states, including restrictions on mail voting, threatening states that don’t turn over voter data, and claiming previous elections have been rife with fraud perpetrated by Democrats and foreign countries.
An Alaska Beacon review of Division of Elections files turned over to the Department of Justice in 2025 found 70 people labeled as noncitizens who either voted or attempted to vote in the state between 2015 and 2025. The Beacon also found 541 people on an inactive voter list were flagged as non-citizens, but “officials say that may include false positives.”
Wednesday’s discussion about the citizenship notifications occurred about 80 minutes into the joint committee hearing that lasted about two hours. Most of the hearing focused on the elections division criteria for determining candidate eligibility, sparked by Beecher’s decision to decertify retired Petersburg teacher Dan J. Sullivan on the assertion his candidacy was intended to create confusion with incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.
The state supreme court at the end of June upheld a judge’s ruling that Beecher didn’t have the authority to disqualify a candidate based on perceived motives.
The legislative hearing about those actions resulted in a partisan skirmish between Beecher and legislators either challenging or supporting her based on their political allegiances. Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who oversees the elections division, was also scheduled to appear, but notified legislators at the last minute that she would not participate.
Beecher acknowledged a range of unprecedented actions were taken while decertifying Dan J. Sullivan and then when listing the two Sullivans on the primary election ballot. Dan S. Sullivan is the only officeholder to ever have “incumbent” listed by his name, for instance. The challenger is listed as “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.” (rather than his requested “Sullivan, Dan J.”) and is the only person on the ballot that does not have a party affiliation listed, even though he is a registered Republican.
In response to a multitude of questions from lawmakers about the fairness of her actions, Beecher said they were justified by the uniqueness of a candidate deliberately trying to create voter confusion and that her actions were within the boundaries of the law.
“The division’s ballot design does not unduly burden (Dan J. Sullivan’s) right to associate with the Republican Party,” she said. “The division kept his affiliation in other publications, and he remains free to campaign and communicate his Republican affiliation outside of the ballot.”
Concern about voters being misled by the omission of his party registration was voiced by Rep. Ashley Carrick, D-Fairbanks, the other co-chair of Thursday’s hearing.
“I think about left-leaning voters right now in my community who may want to vote for Dan J. Sullivan and then find out that he’s actually really right-leaning on issues and decide he’s not a candidate they want to support,” she said. “Having his party affiliation may help those voters feel like they’re more informed and directed to a candidate they would rather support. But not having his affiliation included there seems to provide less information and be more confusing.”
Beecher, in response to a question by Carrick about whether the ballot could have been designed differently, said while that was a possibility “this was the decision that the division made under what we have the authority to do with designing the ballot.”
“It was determined this would be the most distinctive way to differentiate between the two,” Beecher said.
A more favorable line of questions and comments came from Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake.
“It seems to me that you’re protecting the voters in this case,” he said. “You’re trying to differentiate two candidates with similar names and this is how you’ve chosen to do it. And you said earlier in your statement that you have the freedom to do that. Are those all fair statements?”
“Yes, I would agree,” Beecher replied.
This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.