By SCOTT OGAN
You remember the movie “Groundhog Day,” where the main character wakes up to the same daily routine over and over. Welcome to Groundhog Day in Juneau.
Our Democrat-controlled Senate is once again killing popular election reform — this time by attempting to strip Rep. Sarah Vance’s election reform bill, House Bill 129, of its many popular provisions and to instead insert a kill-pill — same-day voter registration.
This is called “bill stripping,” and is being performed on HB 129 by Sen. Scott Kawasaki, Democrat from Fairbanks and chairman of the Senate State Affairs Committee.
Kawasaki did the same thing in 2022 to an election reform bill authored by Wasilla Republican Sen. Mike Shower, who intercepted his own Senate Bill 39 and said “no” to political manipulation of the public trust.
The vast majority of Alaskans do not believe same-day voter registration is necessary or even desirable in order to secure our basic freedoms and fair elections. In fact, most people believe such a provision encourages manipulation and fraud by any bad actor or party.
The main advocates for same-day voter registration are those trying to undermine democracy. It’s more likely that any person not properly registered to vote on the day of an election in not civically engaged.
There is nothing that makes our already weak election statutes more vulnerable to fraud than allowing anyone — legal citizen or not — to show up to the polls and register that same day to vote by signing a meaningless statement that they have lived in the district for 30 days, even without requiring a valid government ID or evidence of residency, then receive a ballot.
Grandstanding Democrats love to talk about ensuring everyone has the right to vote, and yet they fail to support reasonable safeguards against voting by those who do not have the right to vote. Nowhere is the undemocratic imposition of power over the will and interests of the people more present than in these last days of the legislative session.
There is a valid public-interest reason Alaska statutes require a voter to be a 30-day resident of a district before they can vote and to register before the 30-day deadline. It’s to disallow nefarious actors from suddenly showing up in districts where there are tight races and to claim to have moved there in the last 30 days so they can tip the scales in their candidate’s or party’s favor. With the weak provisions inserted into the latest version of the bill, there are no strong personal identification requirements and no language about it being a crime to misrepresent the date someone moved into a district.
Kawasaki’s bill stripping makes it extremely easy to cheat.
While Republicans favor tighter laws and rules securing our voting rights, Democrats seem to favor fewer rules, or rules that are easily bent or broken with no consequence. With Kawasaki’s stripping of Vance’s popular House bill, which passed 33-6 in the House, we see how sound, bi-partisan election law reform becomes self-serving — an effort to favor one party over another. In our Democat-led Senate, the ends justify any means necessary to win.
This latest Groundhog Day version of election rigging is the Holy Grail for the Biden agenda to make Alaska poor again.
I’m willing to bet that the complicit Republicans in the Democratic-controlled Senate will not even read the bill, let alone poll their constituents. Their priorities will be on power and money: getting money for their district and getting their pet bills passed. It’s that point in the session where public trust gives way to the private trough.
Biden’s no-border policy exists for a single reason: to flood our country with tens of millions of illegal aliens who will be steered to states with loose election laws — election laws like Sen. Kawasaki wants that allow same day registration with no proof of residency or citizenship.
Kawasaki’s amendment is part of a nationwide agenda by Democrats to “stack the deck” in their favor to assure that their candidates get elected.
Apparently, reason and public trust do not prevail with Sen. Kawasaki. Rep. Vance now has only one option: Kill her hard-earned election bill, like Sen. Shower had to do. And then, send a copy of the bill to every voter in Kawasaki’s district.
Scott Ogan served as a legislator in the Alaska House and Senate and writes for Must Read Alaska.
