Alaska lawmakers fall 2 votes short of overriding Gov. Dunleavy's veto of election bill

Mari Kanagy, Anchorage Daily News on May 4, 2026

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JUNEAU, Alaska — The Alaska Legislature narrowly voted to sustain Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a sweeping elections reform bill Monday.

In a 38-22 vote, lawmakers fell two votes shy of the 40 votes needed to override the veto. Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican, and Rep. Jeremy Bynum, a Ketchikan Republican, backed off their previous support of the bill and voted to sustain the veto.

The bill would have made sweeping reforms to the state’s election system, putting in place a new ballot tracking and curing system, creating a rural liaison position for the Division of Elections and allowing the division to more easily remove voters who have moved from the state from voter rolls, among other provisions.

Spearheaded by Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat, the bill has drawn support from both major parties and caucuses — including minority caucus Republicans such as Rep. Sarah Vance of Homer and Sen. Mike Cronk of Tok.

The governor, in his veto letter, cited concerns about the ballot curing process and that the “Division of Elections warns such changes would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement securely and reliably in advance of the 2026 elections.”

Wielechowski said in a speech before the vote that, in 2022, the Division of Elections put in place a ballot tracking system in six weeks after Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young’s death triggered a special election. The present bill would give the division 26 weeks to implement the new measures, he noted.

Stedman and Bynum, in interviews following the vote, raised concerns that the bill would be implemented too quickly.

“I can’t speak to what they may or may not have done in 2022,” Bynum said. “I can only speak to what the Division of Elections is telling me today, and what they told me is, is that this timeline is too aggressive for them to effectively put this in the law.”

Bynum said his initial support for the bill came from provisions he thought would newly allow tribal IDs to be used at the polls. He said the Division of Elections this week clarified to lawmakers that tribal IDs are already valid.

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