By the numbers: Just how many voters are on Alaska’s voting rolls today?

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After the Division of Elections conducted its annual clean-up of Alaska’s voter rolls at the end of February, there are 587,277 voters in Alaska. Before the Feb. 29 data purge, 590,778 voters were on the rolls at the Division of Elections.

It’s a process the state division goes through every year after it sends out two required notices to voters who haven’t voted for four years or who have not contacted the division.

Purging means the voters go into inactive status and do not appear on any voter rolls in coming elections. Later, the voters are completely removed if they don’t make themselves known.

If a voter is in an inactive purge status, they can cast a questioned ballot which is reviewed by the questioned board and their ballot is counted to fullest extent possible based on the residence address/house district assignment they provided on the questioned envelope and the address/house direct assignment we have in the voter registration system. They then are put back into an active status. 

In the most recent report 141,240 registered Alaska voters are Republicans, at 24%; 74,769, or 12.73%, are Democrat; Undeclared (those who won’t say) total 258,489, 44%; and Nonpartisans are 82,489, 14%.

It’s an imperfect process, but the division is following state and federal laws that err on the side of not mistakenly removing a legitimate voter. Still, it leaves tens of thousands of names on the list, when mathematically, it doesn’t compute with the number of adults in Alaska.

The U.S. Census says there are an estimated 733,406 residents of Alaska. Of those, 24% (176,017) are under the age of 18, thus ineligible to vote. That leaves a voting age population of about 557,000, if you rule out the ineligible sex felons and noncitizens. (If you have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude or are on probation or parole for the same crime, you are not eligible to vote until the Department of Corrections gives you an unconditional discharge.)

In November of 2022, turnout was 267,047.

Last year during the annual list maintenance process, the Division of Election purged 15,916 voters from the rolls; the purged numbers vary year to year, as the division tries to keep the list up to date, something that is required by state and federal laws that also limit how quickly the division can remove voters from the list.

The division conducts the main list maintenance process from December through February and at other times throughout the year. It is a process required by state and federal laws, which limit the division’s ability to remove voters from the voter list.

Having too many on the rolls is partly due to people applying for Permanent Fund dividends, who are automatically registered to vote unless they opt out, and the ease of registering to vote when they get a driver’s license, the division says. Alaska voters passed a ballot initiative that automatically registers people to vote when they apply and are qualified for a dividend.

“If someone becomes registered but does not vote and does not contact the division, it can take at least eight years and the return of undeliverable mail to remove them from the voter list. Alaska’s list maintenance law requires more steps to remove a voter than the federal list maintenance law, the National Voter Registration Act,” the division says.

Also, military members may register to vote and vote in Alaska elections even if they are stationed overseas and do not plan to return to Alaska. As long as they don’t register or vote in another state, they can be Alaska voters; many do maintain that residency in order to receive and Alaska Permanent Fund dividend.

47 COMMENTS

  1. “Just how many voters are on Alaska’s voting rolls today?”

    Just as many as the radical leftist extremists, in their insatiable lust for power and control, need there to be. Living voters or dead voters, it does not matter.

  2. In the entire article, the most interesting fact is mot mentioned at all. Most years, only 20 to 30 and in an exceptional year 50 percent of those registered voters actually vote and nobody every discusses why most eligible voters in this country seldom if ever vote.

    Could it be that the electorate has begun to realize that it makes very little difference?

  3. Maybe the state should crack down on false PFD applicants and go back to only issuing checks to a local address. And, outside of the military, wonder how many driver licenses are out there held by nonresidents. Or better yet, start a state income to pay for the overspending of our government instead of stealing from the PFD. And what is the real use of all of the bar codes on the mail-in ballot envelopes, or rather, what could they be used for? Sorting? Lots of loose ends in our system. An employer who doesn’t pay into the unemployment insurance or workman’s compensation system can be heavily fined, even jailed, but individuals can get away with fraud without repercussions. Election ballots are even sent out of state by an outside of state contractor who is not required to answer to our laws. What could possibly be worse than our system.

    • Yes, I agree, the state should crack down on false PFD applicants, particularly those slope workers who maintain an Alaska address but live outside. There’s no shortage of them.

  4. How interesting! In the recent Presidential Preference Polling, a fellow i know who has been up here since the 1980s was going to vote for his favorite candidate and his name had been removed from the voter roll! This guy votes in every election. So I wonder what the state’s process was for removing names because his should not have been removed!

    • Ginny – he is not alone. There is a woman who is suing because her name was removed. – sd

          • He actually was registered as a Republican. Be interesting to know if mostly Republicans got dropped from the rolls. On a podcast I was listening to this morning, I think that a lady in another state was dropped from the rolls because she had some change made to her information (name or address or something – can’t recall) at the DMV. She found out that she was supposed to have “reregistered as a Republican Voter” when she made the change. The state she was in offered Democrat, non-partisan or undeclared (one or the other) or Liberal – “Republican” was not offered. Now that I think about it, I think she lived in Cali. She got reregistered as a Republican. I hope that she is following through on the legality of what happened to her.

    • The Republican Party only used the registered Republicans on the voter roll for the PPP. Republican voters were confirmed in the check in process. If the voter is an undeclared or non-partisan voter, the ARP required the voter to reregister as a Republican to vote in the 2024 Republican PPP. We reregistered nearly 200 voters at the Jewel Lake Community Church.

      • They’ll quickly change back to their previous affiliation once they are bombarded with incessant requests for campaign contributions. I’ve been undeclared/nonpartisan ever since I turned 18 and registered for the first time and I have no intention of ever changing that.

      • When I first signed up for Republican, I could ONLY vote for registered Republican candidates (you get an “ONLY” Republican ballot.). I changed due to a more open ballot (UNDECLARED)..I vote for Conservative then Liberal.. Like Voting for Joe Miller verses “Merky”.. There are many Liberal Republicans(RINO’s) that I wouldn’t vote for just because they’re Republicans. I hear many of the “undeclared are actually Republican conservatives. I could do the “switching game”, but the last time I did that I lost out.

      • I heard that there was a “glitch” in the PFD rolls that switched people to another party before the presidential preference polling. Be interesting to see how many “Republicans” were switched to NP or U during that “glitch switch”. Sounds like there was some background cheating going on to me.

  5. Pity they can’t produce data on alleged non partisan and undeclared.

    My observations are in Juneau that means democrat or socialist but unwilling to say so.

  6. The Absentee By-Mail Ballots for state elections are prepared and distributed by the Anchorage DoE Absentee and Petitions Office. An Alaskan Absentee-By Mail Ballot is sent to any registered Alaskan Voter that requests a primary or general election ballot.

    No West Coast vendors involved in the State of Alaska Division of Elections Absentee-By Mail Ballot package preparation and distribution.

    • That’s great, but why is it that Anchorage is not considered part of the state of Alaska for election purposes and not subject to the same rules.

    • Randy, I heard that THIS TIME for the presidential preference polling, the ballots were printed in-state (from the mouth of a poll worker); but, that normally the ballots are printed out-of-state. Sounds like there is conflicting stories here.

  7. 🤷🏼🕵🏻‍♂️
    Way past time to Flush the toilet and have turm limits🤔
    Election integrity analyst says Alaska voter rolls are least accurate in the nation💰💸🎯

  8. With twice as many registered Republicans as Democrats… Republicans should be winning a lot more elections.

      • We can only speculate, Jefferson: the weak-kneed Republicans may have come down with a case of brotherly love at one of the party dinners and now vote as if their soul were imperiled–you know, simply as an unintended consequence of sharing a meal! As they say when they raise their wine glasses before digging into a meal like party gluttons, “Bon appétit!”

        It seems that there is too much lovin’ goin’ on at the Grand Ol’ Party. It’s high time to start knocking heads together and throwing out the miscreants. Offer your services as bouncer, Jeffy, and clean up the party. Out with the RINOs and freeloaders! Give us less talk and more action!

        • Edit: “[T]he weak-kneed Republicans may have come down with a case of brotherly love at one of the party dinners and now vote as if their souls were imperiled–you know, simply as an unintended consequence of sharing a meal!”

    • Republicans have huge registration advantages (>3 R’s to 1 D’s ratios) in 10 districts that elect 10 House Representatives. 7 of 8 Districts with ratios >2 have Republican State House Representatives. 2 of 3 Districts with rations above 1.7 have Republican State House Representatives.

      • The more of your comments I read, the more I think that you are trying to do damage control. “Trust Us – I am telling the truth”

  9. An incompetent national expert claimed the Alaska Voter Roll is the least accurate in the nation.
    Either he failed 3rd grade Reading or he failed to read the Alaska Election Registration Statutes.
    Do not trust the totally unaware or stupid.

    • The Alaskan voter rolls ARE one of the dirtiest rolls in the nation! That is coming from the groups behind the scenes investigating the voter fraud.
      The more of your comments I read, the more I think that you are trying to do damage control. “Trust Us – I am telling the truth.” Randy allegedly says under his breath.

  10. “Just how many voters are on Alaska’s voting rolls today?”
    .
    While Alaska’s an ERIC member, we’ll never know.
    .
    Remember how Alaska’ election officials were so against “ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters” that they spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on lawyers to stop efforts to obtain ERIC data reports pertaining to potentially deceased registrants on the state’s voter rolls?
    .
    A –federal– judge had to order Alaska’s Lieutenant Governor to disclose data reports from ERIC.

    What’s ERIC again? From the “Federalist”: “The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was started by far-left political activist David Becker, who has dedicated his life to attacking conservatives and advancing left-wing policies. Becker also started the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), one of two leftist groups that funneled $419 million in grants from Mark Zuckerberg to mostly blue counties of swing states, funding Democratic get-out-the-vote operations from government election offices in 2020. ERIC shares voter roll data – including records of unregistered citizens – with CEIR, which then reportedly creates targeted mailing lists for unregistered but likely Democrat voters and sends them back to the states for voter registration outreach.
    .
    …per government watchdog Verity Vote, ERIC doesn’t actually clean states’ voter rolls, but rather inflates them.”
    (thefederalist.com/2022/11/21/alabama-withdraws-from-democrat-operative-controlled-voter-registration-database/)
    .
    Recall the last Lieutenant Governor, the Conoco Phillips guy who said not to believe misinformation about elections, while seemingly excusing voter roll corruption by saying he couldn’t do anything about it because of federal law so, according to him, no one’s to blame just because dead people vote?
    (mustreadalaska.com/kevin-meyer-dont-believe-misinformation-about-elections)
    .
    Remember this?
    “Voter registration data for 113K Alaskans hacked but no one tells them until after the election was certified, dead voters voting, Dominion vote tabulation gear running on proprietary software, uncontrolled mail-in voting, ballot harvesting, secretive lieutenant governors, it’s hard to say what inspires the most confidence in Alaska’s election system.”
    (‘apnews.com/article/election-2020-alaska-general-elections-elections-voter-registration-a303960ee8a0ec5b4bb45571ff9630f9)
    .
    Remember President Reagan’s “trust but verify”?
    Why should voters trust, without verification, that the division is following state and federal laws?
    .
    Verification? Is that where you have to trust them when they tell you they’re doing right because they’re the only ones who know what they’re doing?
    .
    So voters must accept that their votes may be cancelled out by tens of thousands of names which have to remain on the list even though, mathematically, the number doesn’t comport with the number of adult American citizens in Alaska?
    .
    Bottom line is, for the time being at least, voters don’t know how many voters are on Alaska’s voting rolls and the Election Division’s unhealthy obsession with ERIC assures they won’t find out.
    .
    Alaska’s legislators, empowered to stop the ERIC farce –right now–, are apparently too busy to care?

  11. And then you have direct incompetence. No republicans voters were able to cast votes on Kodiak during the recent primary, because the person who was to run the election just didn’t bother to show. And then when they did not show the head of the local party apparatus just said oh well.

    • I was told by local Republican groups that they just could not get enough volunteers to work different areas. I call b.s. on that “excuse.” I volunteered to work this presidential preference polling, but I never got called! I have submitted my name to volunteer for the last three years and have never been called! Their stories are full of holes! I wonder why they are purposely suppressing the voting? Get us trained up so that we don’t question the unethical behavior during the Primary and General? We need to question EVERYTHING!

  12. Anchorage folks, I got this link from Alaska Family Action that is for a pdf that has the different candidates in the coming Anchorage election. Please share this pdf or the link!

    ‘https://akvoter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2024-ANC-Values-Voter-Guide-2024-02-22.pdf

  13. I thought I saw an article last week that said the City of Anchorage had sent out 600 Thousand Absentee Mail In Ballots.

  14. the Muni article did NOT say 600 thousand Mail in Ballots were sent out.
    Slightly over 200,000 ballots were mailed to Anchorage Municipal Voters.

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