FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 6, 2026
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), the largest statewide Native organization in Alaska, has membership that includes 192 federally recognized tribes, 11 Alaska Native corporations, 152 Alaska Village corporations, and 11 tribal non-profit organizations, shares deep concerns regarding the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, currently being debated in the United States Senate.
AFN is an advocate for removing voting barriers that disproportionately impact rural and Alaska Native communities. From limited access to in-person voting locations to language access challenges to logistical barriers unique to remote communities, we have consistently worked to ensure that Native voices are not silenced by technical or structural obstacles. The SAVE Act, currently under consideration, would move in the opposite direction, imposing new requirements that will disenfranchise eligible voters and recreate the very barriers our communities have fought for decades to dismantle.
IMPACT ON ALASKA VOTERS
The SAVE Act would require every American to present documentary proof of citizenship — such as a passport or birth certificate — in person at a designated election office in order to register to vote in federal elections. For rural and Alaska Native communities, this mandate would pose serious, potentially insurmountable challenges.
Alaska has only six in-person election offices, located primarily along the Railbelt in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Nome, Wasilla, and Kenai. Eighty percent of Alaska’s communities—home to a significant share of our Alaska Native population—are not on the road system. For a resident of a remote village, complying with this law could require purchasing a plane ticket, securing lodging, and taking days away from work and family—at a personal cost of hundreds to thousands of dollars—simply to register to vote.
AFN also notes that the legislation effectively invalidates Tribal IDs as standalone proof of citizenship. Because Tribal IDs do not include place of birth or citizenship status on their face, Alaska Native voters would need to produce an additional document—such as a certified birth certificate—to meet the bill’s requirements. In Alaska, a birth certificate costs $60 and can take one to two months to process. For many of our Elders and community members, especially those whose records were incompletely kept in earlier generations, obtaining such documents may be impossible.
The bill would also eliminate Alaska’s widely used systems of automatic voter registration through the Permanent Fund Dividend application and online registration—systems that have been essential tools for Alaska Native voter participation. More than 40,000 Alaskans voted by mail in the last presidential election, a practice the bill would also severely restrict.
A SOLUTION IN SEARCH OF A PROBLEM
AFN recognizes that the integrity of our elections is a shared value. But the SAVE Act addresses a problem that does not exist at any meaningful scale. Noncitizen voting is already illegal and punishable by severe criminal penalties. In Alaska, a public records request revealed only 70 possible cases of noncitizen voting since 2015 — roughly seven per year in a state of more than 700,000 people. All federal voter registration forms already require registrants to affirm their citizenship under penalty of perjury.
States that have implemented similar documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements—including Kansas and Arizona—have demonstrated that such laws block far more eligible citizens than noncitizens. In Kansas, a proof-of-citizenship requirement blocked over 30,000 eligible citizens from registering in just two years, with state officials conceding in court that more than 99% of those affected were U.S. citizens. Arizona’s law has blocked approximately 35,000 voters from participating in state and local elections, with a disproportionate impact on voters living on Tribal lands.
Alaska’s election system is not perfect, and administering elections in rural Alaska presents unique logistical challenges. Still, the state has made meaningful progress in improving language access, strengthening coordination with Tribal governments, and tailoring systems such as Ranked Choice Voting and vote-by-mail to our geography. These proposed federal acts would set that progress back and undermine ongoing work.
Rather than imposing new barriers, Congress should strengthen access to the ballot—particularly in rural Alaska—by supporting early and absentee voting and improving the reliability of mail. Alaska’s Legislature recently passed SB 64, which takes practical steps in that direction. The bill recognizes Tribal IDs for voting, establishes a rural liaison to coordinate with tribes and expand access, creates a ballot curing process to reduce rejections, provides prepaid postage, and improves ballot tracking and transparency.
These are Alaska-driven solutions that reflect real conditions on the ground. Reliable mail service remains essential for civic engagement, yet in many rural communities, it is still not a reality. Congress should build on efforts like SB 64—not move in the opposite direction.
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