Alaska lawmakers are raising alarm over a decision last year by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom to release confidential information about the state’s voters to the federal Department of Justice.

Dahlstrom, who oversees Alaska’s elections, joined officials from a handful of states in acquiescing to demands from the administration of President Donald Trump to share information about voters that had never previously been requested by the federal government.

Under Dahlstrom’s leadership, the Alaska Division of Elections signed on to an agreement laying out the Justice Department’s authority to request the removal of names from the state’s voter list.

Many states across the country, including several led by Republicans, have refused to comply with requests for the information from the Justice Department, prompting the Trump administration to file lawsuits challenging the states’ decisions. Federal judges in three states have so far ruled against the Trump administration. The Justice Department has yet to prevail in any of its court challenges seeking voter information.

Dahlstrom has defended her decision to share Alaskans’ information with Trump officials.

Under Alaska law, information identifying voters — including their date of birth, Social Security number, driver’s license number, voter identification number, place of birth and signature — is considered confidential. Under the December agreement between the Justice Department and Alaska’s Division of Elections, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers were shared with federal officials along with other information about voters.

Rachel Witty, an attorney with the Alaska Department of Law, said a provision in state statute allows the Division of Elections to divulge voters’ private information to government officials “for governmental purposes authorized under law.”

“We looked at Alaska law to see whether the disclosure was permitted, and that was how the decision was made,” Witty told Alaska House members during a legislative hearing held Monday.

In a joint hearing of the House State Affairs and Judiciary committees, lawmakers questioned the reasoning provided by state officials for handing Alaskans’ data to the Trump administration.

“We were trying to cooperate with the federal government on their request, and proceeded accordingly,” said Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher. Beecher is a registered Republican, but she said the decision made by the division was nonpartisan.

Beecher said she did not confer with other states that refused to comply with the Trump administration’s request, before deciding to comply with it.

In the same hearing, former Alaska Attorney General Bruce Botelho, a Democrat, advised lawmakers to challenge the Dunleavy administration’s interpretation of state law in court.

Botelho said that the National Voter Registration Act, which was cited as the legal basis for sharing the voter information, authorizes federal enforcement against states that fail to adequately maintain their voter list.

“But it does not guarantee or grant to the Department of Justice a standing right to possess copies of every state’s unredacted voter lists, nor does it deputize the Department of Justice to perform list maintenance on the states’ behalf,” he said, concluding that the Trump administration had not requested voters’ information for a purpose “authorized under the law,” as Alaska statute requires.

Alaska should not “cede to the Department of Justice an operational role in deciding who may remain registered,” said Botelho.

“The lieutenant governor has effectively bound the state of Alaska to follow federal instructions on who may remain registered without legislative standards, public process or judicial supervision,” Botelho said.

Botelho told lawmakers that they should challenge the agreement with the Justice Department in court to invalidate it and ensure that the names of Alaska voters are not removed from the state’s list at the demand of the Trump administration.

An attorney working for the Legislature, Andrew Dunmire, said Monday that he agreed with Botelho’s recommendation.

Dunmire last month wrote in a memo that because the federal government had never previously requested Alaska voters’ confidential information, there was no case law supporting or refuting the request. However, since then, federal courts in other parts of the country have ruled that the Justice Department’s requests have no basis in federal law, Dunmire wrote.

The Trump administration in recent months has sought to secure confidential voter information from all states, citing unsubstantiated concerns about voter fraud.

National and state analyses have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But experts say that claims about fraud could serve as a basis for reducing voters’ trust in election outcomes and could make it harder for some Americans to vote.

Trump is also pushing for Congress to approve legislation that would grant the executive branch broad access to voters’ information, along with tighter voter identification requirements. Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski opposes the legislation while U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and U.S. Rep. Nick Begich support it.

In Alaska, the Trump administration’s efforts were met with anger from lawmakers, particularly among Democrats, who say there aren’t sufficient guardrails on how the information can be used, meaning it could be employed as part of the Trump administration’s targeting of noncitizens.

“We don’t really know what’s going to happen with our data in the immediate or longer-term future, and the retention of that data is extremely suspect, and Alaska does not have a recourse for that,” said Rep. Ashley Carrick, a Fairbanks Democrat who chairs the House State Affairs Committee.

“Privacy is one of the most foundational elements of Alaska’s constitution. So to questions that this is partisan, I would ask, is privacy a partisan issue? Alaskans seem to have weighed in strongly that it is not,” Carrick added. “I believe that our Division of Elections, being as competent as they are, can manage these voter rolls without having had to share them with DOJ. We do not need their help. So if that is the reason stated, we should not have taken this action.”

Rep. Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said the release of the information “has raised significant concerns from constituents.”

“There are some who say that this sharing of the unredacted voter rolls is not that big of a deal. The DOJ was asking for something that had been created by the U.S. government in the first place. After all, Social Security numbers were created by the U.S. government. So honestly, has any real confidentiality been broken? Well, a reminder, they’ve never done this before,” said Gray.

Former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, a Republican, told lawmakers that he shared some of the concerns raised, but ultimately trusted the advice from the Alaska Department of Law on whether to comply with the demand from the Trump administration.

“You look at the overarching federal government coming in and effectively telling us what to do and how to do things. I bristle a little bit at that,” said Leman. But the Department of Law attorneys “made the right call” when they determined the data should be shared, he added.

“Do I like the results? With the information sitting in the Department of Justice archives and available there during a possible breach of information? No, not necessarily,” Leman said. “But we have to follow the law, and agree that they made the correct call on that.”

Some Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, defended the basis for the information to be shared.

“Our voter rolls are a mess, and we haven’t really been able to fix it,” said Rep. Steve St. Clair, a Wasilla Republican, referencing the Division of Elections’ longstanding effort to remove the names of inactive voters from the rolls. “So I’m not against the DOJ requesting it. I don’t think they have any nefarious purposes. We have a pretty bad history of protecting our own information, so I don’t really see what the issue is with this.”

Beecher said the Division of Elections would confer with the Department of Law before removing the names of voters from Alaska’s list, if federal officials ask for any names to be removed.

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