SB 1-ELECTIONS: BALLOT, VOTING, SECURITY  4:41:10 PM CHAIR KAWASAKI announced the consideration of SENATE BILL NO. 1 "An Act relating to election security, voting, and ballots; and providing for an effective date." 4:42:13 PM SENATOR MIKE SHOWER, District O, Alaska State Legislature, Juneau, Alaska, sponsor of SB 1, stated that many of the provisions in SB 1 are similar to those in SB 19. They reflect the bipartisan efforts to improve the elections system in Alaska. SB 1 addresses over registration, ballot tracking, and ballot curing. The intent is make the system as fair as possible, have processes to catch fraud, and restore faith in the elections system. He deferred to Scott Ogan for further introduction of SB 1. 4:45:46 PM SCOTT OGAN, Staff, Senator Mike Shower, Alaska State Legislature, Juneau, Alaska, provided a high level summary of the sponsor statement for SB 1. It read as follows: Senate Bill 1 was drafted to address concerns with chain of custody, ballot security, reporting election offenses, preserving forensic integrity of ballots, multi factor authentication ballot curing, ballot tracking, cybersecurity and Legislative Council's authority to contract with technical experts. This measure is part of the bill sponsor's policy metric to make it easy to vote, yet hard to cheat. When voting policy makes it easier to vote, the downside is to make it easier to cheat. This creates the public perception that our sacred right to vote is ripe for fraud and undermines voter confidence. When voting policy is to make it harder to cheat, it makes it harder to vote. This bill attempts to apply the policy metric of making it easy to vote, yet hard to cheat, which most people can agree upon. Ballot chain of custody protocols must be strengthened to assure every ballot gets tracked from printer until 22 months after the election. Destroying extra ballots in precincts exposes the election system to plausible fraud by destroying forensic integrity of said ballot. There is no widely published election offense system, nor is there anyone tasked with being an election fraud expert in the Department of Law or the Division of Elections. Election laws are complex and confusing. Creating an election offense hotline with staff trained in understanding potential fraud issues will keep people accountable and build public confidence. MR. OGAN described multi-factor authentication and advised that more information was in the bill packets. SB 1 requires the director to write and implement a cybersecurity plan and it authorizes Legislative Council to hire technical experts to conduct forensic audits to verify the security of an election. 4:51:24 PM CHAIR KAWASAKI turned to Jim Stocker who was invited to provide testimony by the sponsor's office. He summarized Mr. Stocker's biography, which includes some months of citizen involvement on voting issues. 4:51:52 PM JIM STOCKER, representing self, Palmer, Alaska, provided invited testimony in support of SB 1. He described SB 1 as a great start to restore system integrity and voter confidence. He relayed that he had provided front-line testimony the last seven months about Alaska's voting system and his perception was that voter confidence was crashing. He said this was reflected in the poll numbers for the last election. He relayed that his current effort was focused on gathering signatures to eliminate the voter initiative for ranked choice voting. He also recounted his efforts in the MatSu Valley to eliminate the use of Dominion voting machines. MR. STOCKER described the four major concern of voters he speaks to. These are ranked choice voting, Dominion voting machines, the reason it takes so long to count votes and voter rolls, and why the state uses the nonprofit, nonpartisan Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) system. He said he'd just become aware that states like Missouri, Florida, and Virginia announced they would no longer use this system. 4:55:09 PM SENATOR BJORKMAN requested an explanation of the ERIC system. MR. STOCKER said ERIC is the acronym for the Electronic Registration Information Center whose objective is to improve the accuracy of voter registration. He said it's obvious that it doesn't work because the numbers don't match and former President Trump has encouraged GOP governors to stop using the system. He encouraged people who were interested to look at who founded and funded ERIC. He continued that if he were to make a statement based on pure conjecture, he'd say the system is criminal. 4:56:23 PM SENATOR BJORKMAN asked if it was his understanding that the ERIC system provided a way for states to track whether people were also registered to vote in another state so they could be removed from the voter rolls. MR. STOCKER said that's the objective but it's not working. His belief is that in Alaska there are more ballots sent out than the number of registered voters on the rolls and it seems to be that way in other states. He acknowledged that he wasn't an expert and encouraged the committee to take a deeper look. 4:57:36 PM SENATOR BJORKMAN asked if there was a timeline states have to follow before they remove someone if they are not found to be registered in another state. MR. STOCKER said he didn't know. SENATOR BJORKMAN commented that it would be interesting to know whether the ERIC system speeds the process for removing someone from the voter rolls. 4:58:21 PM MR. OGAN offered his understanding that plus or minus 30 states participate in the ERIC system. What it does is crosscheck whether or not people are registered to vote in another state. He noted that the Public Interest Legal Foundation has developed best practices for a 50-state solution. It uses more databases to update voter rolls. 4:59:09 PM SENATOR SHOWER added that ERIC has a twofold problem. First, it violates the National Voting Rights Act of 1964 and second, it isn't a government entity so there is no oversight from state government. He continued that without a true forensic audit, nobody can say definitively that there was or was not fraud in the last election. He concluded that the goal of SB 1 is to do better with elections. 5:01:17 PM SENATOR WIELECHOWSKI asked whether the Division of Elections (DOE) would appear before the committee again on Thursday. CHAIR KAWASAKI confirmed that the committee would hear from several elections officials on Thursday. SENATOR WIELECHOWSKI said he'd be interested in hearing the division discuss the concerns that have been articulated today and whether they merit further scrutiny. He emphasized that if the claims are accurate they need to be fixed, and if they aren't accurate the public should be informed. 5:02:54 PM SENATOR MERRICK asked the sponsor to describe a forensic audit and how it differs from a regular audit. SENATOR SHOWER clarified that the accurate term was a risk limiting audit. It entails a look into the system to determine whether people on the voter rolls are actually eligible and appropriately registered to vote. 5:05:12 PM MR. OGAN directed attention to a document in the packet titled "De-weaponizing and Standardizing the Post-Election Audit" that outlines the parameters for credible audits. CHAIR KAWASAKI thanked the sponsor and other participants and held SB 1 in committee.