JUNEAU, Alaska — After vetoing the Legislature’s election reform bill last week, Gov. Mike Dunleavy requested a do-over with a largely similar elections bill Thursday. It includes a new signature verification process and delays implementation past the November general election.

But lawmakers said they don’t have the time or political will to pass the governor’s new version, with less than two weeks left in the regular session.

“There’s simply not time left in the session to entertain another bill that the governor’s office has put forward, which, to me, is almost a gratuitous effort to try to salvage what I clearly would describe as a very questionable decision to veto the bill in the first place,” said House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent.

The vetoed Senate Bill 64 would have made broad reforms to the state’s election system, representing years of negotiations and priorities from both sides of the aisle in the Legislature.

Included in the bill was a ballot curing system that would have allowed voters to fix minor mistakes on their ballots that would otherwise cause them to be disqualified, and a system to track ballots by phone and email, among other provisions.

In his veto letter, the governor wrote that the ballot tracking and ballot curing provisions in the bill were “problematic,” and that the Division of Elections said the measure would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible,” to implement before the November general election. Bill supporters disputed this argument during last week’s floor vote on whether to override Dunleavy’s veto, arguing that election experts advised the timeline for implementing the measures was achievable.

The Legislature on Monday failed to override the veto by two votes. Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican, and Rep. Jeremy Bynum, a Ketchikan Republican, flipped from their previous support of the bill, echoing Dunleavy’s concerns about implementing the bill by this fall.

A letter from the governor accompanying the new bill states that he believes the new version “builds on the work of Senate Bill 64 by making important changes to Alaska’s election laws while providing the Division of Elections with the time and tools necessary to implement those changes securely and reliably.”

The new bill changes the proposed ballot curing process, only allowing election officials to cure ballots for issues related to the voter signature — if the voter failed to sign their ballot or if their signature didn’t match the signature on file, for example. But a missing witness signature or a case where a voter’s registration information doesn’t match other state records would not be curable.

It would also implement a signature verification system for ballots.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat and the driving force behind Senate Bill 64, said that he supports the signature verification provision, and that it was initially included but ultimately removed from the original bill because of the cost.

A bill Dunleavy introduced in 2021 calling for a similar signature verification system would have cost $5 million, to implement the software and train staff. An elections reform bill that narrowly failed in 2024 also called for signature verification software, and was estimated to cost about the same.

Under Dunleavy’s new proposal, the bill’s changes wouldn’t take effect until 2027. This means if it were to pass, voters couldn’t cure their ballots and officials couldn’t verify signatures until next year.

Wielechowski said he would be open to a conversation with the governor about adding signature verification to the election reform package, but he has “zero interest” in pushing for a bill that wouldn’t be put in place until next year, after the upcoming elections.

Stedman, the sole majority caucus member from either chamber to vote in opposition to the bill, faced speculation that he traded his vote to sustain the veto for the governor’s favor on specific items in the capital budget. Stedman is co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee and is instrumental in crafting the capital budget, which this year features significant funding measures for Sitka.

He emphatically denied the notion at a Tuesday press availability with Senate leadership.

“I don’t do quid pro quo or bill trading with the governor, I don’t even do it with other legislators, because once you do that, your soul’s sold, and you’re done in this building,” Stedman said.

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