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Fact Check

Murkowski's Memory Problem

A viral tweet, a swift Community Note, and what the senator's own voting record reveals about the new SAVE Act debate

By The Footnote Staff March 2026

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) recently took to X to voice concerns about Republican-backed election legislation, framing her objection in a very particular way: by invoking her party's united opposition to Democratic voting reforms in 2021. It was a rhetorically tidy argument. It also ran into a problem almost immediately.

@lisamurkowski on X

"When Democrats attempted to advance sweeping election reform legislation in 2021, Republicans were unanimous in opposition because it would have federalized elections, something we have long opposed. Now, I'm seeing proposals such as the SAVE Act and MEGA that would effe…"

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski · 1 day ago

⚑ Community Note · Added by readers

Senator Murkowski voted to advance the 2021 voter reforms she references here. She was the only Republican to do so.

The Community Note is accurate. And it points to a tension at the heart of Murkowski's current positioning — one that becomes even more striking when you understand what those 2021 bills actually contained, and who they were specifically designed to protect.

What Actually Happened in 2021

The Democratic-led voting reform push of 2021 consisted of two major bills. The Freedom to Vote Act would have set national minimum standards for elections — early voting, mail-in voting, automatic registration. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act targeted something more specific: restoring the federal oversight requirement that the Supreme Court had effectively dismantled eight years earlier.

Murkowski did vote against a procedural motion on the Freedom to Vote Act, citing concerns about federalizing elections — the same argument she's deploying today. But on the John Lewis Act, she broke from her party entirely. She not only voted to advance the bill; she was its co-sponsor. She was the sole Republican to do so.

Murkowski's 2021 Voting Record on Election Bills

• ✗Voted against advancing the Freedom to Vote Act (citing federalization concerns)
• ✓Voted for advancing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — the only Republican to do so
• ★Co-sponsored the John Lewis Act alongside Sen. Joe Manchin

Her tweet implied uniform Republican opposition that she was part of. The record tells a more complicated story.

The Supreme Court Case at the Center of It All

To understand why the John Lewis Act mattered — and why Murkowski backed it — you have to go back to Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 Supreme Court decision that reshaped American election law.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 required certain states and counties with documented histories of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval — called "preclearance" — before changing any voting rules. It was one of the most effective tools in the law. The Shelby County court didn't strike down preclearance itself, but it struck down the formula used to determine which jurisdictions were covered, ruling that it relied on data too outdated to justify. Without the formula, the preclearance requirement became a dead letter.

The practical effects were immediate. Texas announced a strict photo ID law within 24 hours of the ruling. Other states followed. The John Lewis Act was Congress's attempt to respond — to update the coverage formula with current data and restore federal oversight where it was most needed.

"Texas announced a strict photo ID law within 24 hours of the Shelby County ruling."

Why Alaska Made Murkowski's Position Coherent

Here is what makes Murkowski's co-sponsorship of the John Lewis Act not just politically notable but geographically logical: Alaska was itself a covered jurisdiction under the original Voting Rights Act.

When Congress amended the VRA in 1975 to extend protections to language minorities, Alaska was added to the preclearance list specifically because of its history of discriminatory practices against Alaska Native voters. The John Lewis Act, as written, directly addressed the barriers Alaska Natives continue to face — distant polling places, lack of transportation infrastructure, roads that become impassable during winter election seasons, and the need for voting materials in Native languages.

For Murkowski, supporting the John Lewis Act wasn't ideologically inconsistent. It was, arguably, constituent service.

The SAVE Act: A Very Different Kind of Federal Intervention

So where does the SAVE Act fit in? Murkowski's tweet frames it as the same kind of overreach she opposed in 2021. Critics argue that comparison collapses a crucial distinction.

The SAVE Act would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship — a passport or certified birth certificate — to register to vote in federal elections, and would mandate that registration be done in person. It effectively eliminates online and mail-based registration for most voters.

The Kansas Warning

Opponents point to Kansas as a case study in what happens when these requirements are implemented. In 2011, Kansas passed its own proof-of-citizenship registration law. When it was finally struck down by the courts, the evidence at trial showed that more than 31,000 eligible citizens had been prevented from registering — roughly 12% of all applicants — while the number of noncitizens successfully stopped was a tiny fraction of that. The court also found that many of the noncitizen registrations that did occur were the result of state employee errors, not deliberate fraud. Kansas ultimately paid $1.9 million in legal fees. The state's own Republican Secretary of State, who had voted for the law as a legislator, later said plainly: "It didn't work out so well."

For critics, the SAVE Act repeats this experiment at national scale.

2021 Bills vs. SAVE Act: A Comparison

• ↔Freedom to Vote Act: Set national minimum standards; expanded access (early voting, automatic registration)
• ↔John Lewis VRA: Restored anti-discrimination oversight after Shelby County; required federal preclearance for covered jurisdictions
• ↔SAVE Act: Requires in-person, documentary proof of citizenship to register; restricts access; mirrors laws already blocked in courts

Both sets of laws involve federal standards for elections. But one expanded access and targeted proven discrimination; the other narrows access in ways courts have found produce significant rates of eligible-voter exclusion. Whether that distinction matters to Murkowski's argument is, in the end, a political question. But it is a distinction that exists.

The Bottom Line

Assessment

Senator Murkowski's tweet painted a picture of unified Republican opposition to 2021 election reforms — opposition she implicitly placed herself within. The Community Note that flagged it was correct: she was not simply part of that opposition. She co-sponsored the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and cast the only Republican vote to advance it. Her current framing, while not without any factual basis, omits context that is directly relevant to her argument. For a senator representing a state whose own citizens were among the populations those bills were designed to protect, the omission is especially notable.

Filed under:

Lisa Murkowski SAVE Act Voting Rights John Lewis VRA Alaska Natives Shelby County Fact Check Election Law

Election Law & Policy

The Political Breakdown

March 25, 2026

The SAVE Act & Voting Rights

The Hanging Chad Returns: Why Alaska Could Break the SAVE Act

A quarter century after Florida's punch cards upended American democracy, a new voting controversy is brewing — and the Last Frontier may be ground zero for the constitutional challenge that defines it.

Analysis  ·  #akleg  ·  #akgov

Remember the hanging chad? That tiny, partially punched piece of cardboard that paralyzed a presidential election and sent the country into five weeks of legal chaos? Most Americans filed it away as a quirky footnote to the year 2000. But the legal principle it forced the Supreme Court to confront — that similarly situated voters cannot be treated differently in the electoral process — never went away. And right now, it may be the most important precedent in American election law that nobody is talking about.

The SAVE Act, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Supporters argue it closes a loophole that allows non-citizens to slip onto voter rolls. Critics argue it creates massive new barriers to legitimate voting. Both sides are probably right about something. But the constitutional fight that could ultimately decide the law's fate may not be about citizenship at all. It may be about Alaska.

What the Hanging Chad Actually Decided

Before explaining why Alaska matters, it helps to understand what Bush v. Gore (2000) actually held — because it's widely misunderstood. The Supreme Court did not decide who won the election on the merits. It stopped the Florida recount on the grounds that different counties were applying different standards to evaluate ambiguous ballots. Some counties counted a dimpled chad — where the card was indented but not punched through — as a valid vote. Others required full perforation. The same physical ballot, evaluated by different humans in different counties, could produce opposite outcomes.

The Court found that this inconsistency violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The underlying principle: if the state undertakes to count votes, it must do so with uniform standards. Similarly situated voters must be treated the same way.

“The hanging chad was never really about a piece of cardboard. It was about whether a vote is complete when the voter acts — or only when the system processes it correctly.”

Courts have since treated Bush v. Gore as "limited to present circumstances" — meaning it cannot be cited as binding precedent demanding the same outcome in a different case. But that limitation applies to its use as mandatory authority. It says nothing about its power as a legal analogy — a vivid illustration of a principle the Court itself has already recognized. And that principle maps onto the SAVE Act with uncomfortable precision.

Alaska: Where the Law Meets Reality

Alaska is not a typical American state. It has over 200 rural communities, most of them Alaska Native villages, that are not connected to the road system. You cannot drive to them. You reach them by small plane or boat, weather permitting. Mail service can be suspended for days when a storm grounds the planes or a worker gets sick. The nearest election office might be a 40-minute bush plane flight away — assuming there is a flight that day.

This is not a hypothetical problem. In the 2022 general election, between 55% and 78% of absentee ballots from House districts spanning the Aleutian Islands up the western coast to the North Slope arrived at election offices after Election Day. Rural Alaska districts have had ballot rejection rates around 17% — far higher than urban areas — for reasons entirely outside voters' control. In the 2024 presidential election, poll workers in Atqasuk, a village in northern Alaska, tallied votes on Election Day but could not reach the elections division by phone. They secured the ballots and mailed them. Those ballots arrived nine days later.

Case to Watch Watson v. Republican National Committee is currently before the Supreme Court, with a decision expected by June 2026. Alaska's Attorney General filed an amicus brief in support of neither party, asking the Court to clarify what "received by Election Day" means for a state where ballots can take nine days to arrive through no fault of the voter. The Trump DOJ filed a brief on the opposite side.

The SAVE Act makes this worse. By requiring documentary proof of citizenship to be presented in person at an election office for mail registrations, it effectively eliminates the practical ability of many rural Alaskans to register to vote at all. You cannot mail in a registration form without first flying to a government office. For a resident of Beaver, Alaska, that is a 40-minute plane ride just to get started.

The Chad Analogy Comes Full Circle

Here is where the legal argument gets genuinely interesting. Watson v. RNC asks the Supreme Court to decide when a mail-in ballot is legally complete — when the voter drops it in the mailbox, or when an election office receives it. That is, structurally, the exact same question the hanging chad raised in 2000. Is a vote cast when the voter acts, or only when the system successfully processes it?

In Florida, the answer mattered because machines failed to fully punch through some cards. In Alaska, it matters because mail service and geography fail to deliver some ballots on time. In both cases, the voter did everything right. The system failed to complete the process. And in both cases, the question of how to handle that ambiguity — count it or reject it — is being answered differently depending on where you live.

An urban voter in Anchorage who drops a ballot in a mailbox the day before the election and has it received the next morning faces a completely different reality than a voter in Atqasuk who does the same thing and waits nine days. If the law treats those two situations identically — rejecting any ballot received after Election Day — it is producing unequal outcomes from equal behavior. That is the Bush v. Gore problem, restated for the twenty-first century.

“Alaska is not asking for special treatment. It is asking for equal treatment — which is a much harder argument to dismiss.”

A Layered Constitutional Challenge

The Bush v. Gore analogy is not the only arrow in the quiver of a potential SAVE Act challenge. The affected population in rural Alaska is disproportionately Alaska Native, which adds a Voting Rights Act dimension — Section 2 prohibits voting practices that result in the denial of the right to vote on account of race. Statistical evidence of disparate rejection rates already exists. Adding SAVE Act documentation requirements on top of existing barriers would likely accelerate that disparity in ways that are cleanly documentable.

There is also a poll tax analog worth examining. The requirement to travel hundreds of miles by bush plane to present documents in person before registering to vote bears a structural resemblance to the kinds of facially neutral requirements that courts have struck down historically as undue burdens on the right to vote. The cost is not a dollar amount. It is an airfare, a day of travel, and the grace of good weather.

Alaska's Attorney General has already laid much of the factual record by filing in Watson v. RNC. Senator Lisa Murkowski has said publicly that no state would be more harmed by a ruling requiring ballots to be received by Election Day than Alaska. The political cover, the legal record, and the factual foundation are all already in place. If the SAVE Act passes in its current form, Alaska may find itself at the center of the most significant voting rights litigation since the Voting Rights Act itself.

What It Means for the Rest of the Country

Alaska's situation is extreme, but it is not unique in kind — only in degree. Rural voters across the Mountain West, tribal communities in the Southwest, and remote areas throughout the country face versions of the same geographic and logistical barriers. Alaska simply makes the problem impossible to ignore or dismiss as marginal. The nine-day ballot from Atqasuk is the hanging chad of this era: a concrete, specific, undeniable instance of the system failing a voter who did nothing wrong.

The hanging chad changed American election law. It produced the Help America Vote Act, eliminated punch card machines, and established provisional balloting as a federal right. It forced the country to confront the gap between how elections are supposed to work and how they actually work on the ground.

The SAVE Act, if it passes and if it is challenged in court with Alaska at the center, may do the same thing again. The question the courts will ultimately have to answer is the same one Florida forced on us in 2000: when a voter does everything right, and the system fails to complete the process, whose problem is that — and what does equal protection require us to do about it?

The chad was ambiguous. The Atqasuk ballot was not. That may make the argument stronger, not weaker.

This analysis is based on publicly available legal filings, congressional legislation, and court records. It represents the author's legal reasoning and does not constitute legal advice. Watson v. Republican National Committee (No. 24-1260) is currently pending before the Supreme Court with a decision expected June 2026.