Lisa Murkowski said Friday that the GOP-backed SAVE Act could make it far harder — and far more expensive — for some people in Alaska to register to vote in federal elections. In a opinion piece, she warned that the bill could force some Alaskans to spend more than $1,000 on travel and lodging just to complete the process in person.
The Alaska senator’s warning is getting attention now because the bill is tied to the November elections and would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for new federal voter registrations. In some cases, that proof would have to be presented face to face to an election official, a change Murkowski said would effectively end online registration in Alaska.
She said the burden would fall hardest on remote residents in a state that is more than twice the size of Texas, where roughly 80% of communities and about 20% of the population are not connected by road. Alaska has only six election offices where the requirement could clearly be met, which means many voters would have no nearby place to handle the paperwork.
Murkowski laid out one example in blunt terms: an 18-year-old in Savoonga, on a remote island in the Bering Sea, trying to vote for the first time. Under the bill, she said, that person would have to fly on Bering Air to Nome, a round trip she put at about $780, then pay more than $300 for a night at the Aurora Inn. Even before food and local transportation, she said, the trip would top $1,000.
That is the part of the bill Murkowski says cannot be ignored. She supports measures meant to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections, but says the SAVE Act would still have serious negative effects in Alaska, especially for Alaska Native voters and older residents who may not have a readily available birth certificate to prove eligibility.
The friction is plain: a bill promoted as a safeguard against improper voting could, in her view, shut out eligible voters in the very places where getting to an election office is already difficult. Alaska allows online registration now, and Murkowski said taking that option away would create chaos before the November elections. What happens next depends on whether the bill is changed before it reaches voters, but for remote Alaskans the cost she described is already real: for some, casting a ballot could start with a plane ticket.
