Alaska prosecutors are pushing forward with felony voter misconduct cases against a group of American Samoan residents in the small port city of Whittier, even as a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling has reshaped the national debate over citizenship and who qualifies for its protections.
The prosecutions target 11 American Samoans, all from the same tight-knit community, who registered to vote and marked themselves as U.S. citizens on their forms. The problem: American Samoans are not automatically U.S. citizens. They are U.S. nationals, a legal distinction with real consequences that many of the defendants say they did not fully understand, and that local election officials may have encouraged them to overlook.
American Samoa holds a singular position in American law. It is the only U.S. territory where people born on its soil are not granted citizenship at birth. Residents of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands all receive birthright citizenship. American Samoans do not. Instead, they carry the designation of "U.S. national," a status that allows them to live and work anywhere in the United States but bars them from voting in federal and most state elections unless they go through the naturalization process.
That distinction sits at the heart of the Whittier cases. When the defendants filled out voter registration forms, no option existed for "U.S. national." The only citizenship box available was "U.S. citizen." Checking it, the defendants and their attorneys argue, was not an act of fraud but a reasonable response to a form that did not account for their legal reality.
The broader question of birthright citizenship has become a flashpoint in national politics. The Supreme Court's recent ruling on the subject prompted strong reactions from President Trump, who warned the decision would cost the country "trillions."
The lead case before Alaska's appeals court involves Tupe Smith, an American Samoa-born resident of Whittier who registered to vote and participated in local elections. Smith now faces felony voter misconduct charges, a classification that carries the weight of a criminal record and potential prison time.
Smith's defense rests on a straightforward claim: city election officials told her it was appropriate to mark herself as a U.S. citizen on the registration form, since no alternative existed for nationals. Her attorneys laid out the argument in a September court filing, as AP News reported:
"Her belief that U.S. nationals may vote in local elections, which was supported by advice from City of Whittier election officials, was simply mistaken."
That framing puts the question of criminal intent front and center. Voter misconduct charges in Alaska require prosecutors to prove that a defendant knowingly made a false statement. If Smith genuinely believed she was following the rules, and if election workers reinforced that belief, the felony charges face a steep climb on appeal.
The outcome of Smith's case will ripple outward. Ten other American Samoans in Whittier, including Smith's husband, face the same charges under the same set of facts. A ruling in Smith's favor could dismantle the entire batch of prosecutions. A ruling against her could expose a small community to devastating legal consequences for what their defenders call an honest mistake.
The central legal tension is whether checking a box on a poorly designed form amounts to criminal conduct. Alaska's voter registration materials did not offer a "U.S. national" option. The defendants had no way to accurately represent their status without leaving the citizenship question blank, which could have triggered its own problems with their registration.
State Sen. Forrest Dunbar weighed in on the prosecutorial priorities at stake:
"We should be going after people who are genuine criminals, who are violent criminals, or at least have the intent to deceive."
Dunbar's criticism reflects a growing concern that the state is spending resources on cases where deception was never the goal. The defendants did not sneak onto voter rolls. They walked into a government office, spoke with election workers, and followed the guidance they received. Charging them with felonies for that sequence of events raises hard questions about proportionality and prosecutorial discretion.
Meanwhile, legislative battles over who qualifies for citizenship protections have intensified on Capitol Hill. Sen. Banks filed legislation to strip birthright citizenship from children of illegal immigrants, citing Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence in the recent Supreme Court case, a move that underscores how contested the boundaries of citizenship have become.
Whittier is a city of roughly 200 people, accessible only by a single-lane tunnel through the Chugach Mountains or by boat. Its population includes a notable American Samoan community, many of whom work in the local fish processing industry. In a town that small, 11 felony prosecutions from a single ethnic group do not go unnoticed.
The cases have drawn attention to the gap between federal immigration categories and the practical realities of civic life in remote Alaska. American Samoans serve in the U.S. military at high rates, pay federal taxes, and carry U.S. passports stamped with "national" rather than "citizen." Many live their entire adult lives in the United States without fully grasping that their legal status differs from that of someone born in Honolulu or San Juan.
That confusion is not unique to Whittier. Across the country, American Samoans have encountered bureaucratic systems that do not recognize or accommodate their national status. The voter registration form at issue in these cases is one example. Driver's license applications, employment verification systems, and federal benefits paperwork have all created similar friction points.
The Whittier prosecutions land at a moment when the legal architecture of citizenship is under intense scrutiny. The Supreme Court's recent birthright citizenship ruling reshaped the constitutional landscape, and the political fallout has been swift. Justice Alito's concurrence called birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants "grotesque," a signal of how deeply divided the Court remains on questions of who belongs and on what terms.
For the Whittier defendants, the high court's ruling adds a layer of uncertainty. If the legal definition of citizenship is shifting at the constitutional level, the already murky status of American Samoan nationals becomes even harder to pin down. Defense attorneys could argue that prosecuting their clients for misunderstanding a distinction that confuses lawmakers, judges, and election officials alike is fundamentally unjust.
Alaska's News Source reported that the state intends to continue the prosecutions despite the shifting legal ground, a decision that will test whether Alaska courts view the defendants as criminals or casualties of a system that failed them.
The political dynamics around citizenship show no signs of cooling. Republican senators have acknowledged they lack a legislative fallback if judicial rulings on birthright citizenship do not go their way, leaving the policy landscape in flux.
The Alaska appeals court faces a narrow but consequential question: did Tupe Smith knowingly make a false statement when she checked the "U.S. citizen" box, or did she make a good-faith error based on official guidance? The answer turns on intent, and the facts as presented by the defense suggest the state will have difficulty proving it.
If the court dismisses Smith's charges, prosecutors will need to explain why they brought felony cases against 11 people for following instructions from their own election office. If the court upholds the charges, it will establish that American Samoans bear full criminal responsibility for navigating a registration system that was never built to accommodate them.
Either way, the ruling will send a message far beyond Whittier. Thousands of American Samoans live on the U.S. mainland. Many have registered to vote in state and local elections under similar circumstances. A conviction here could chill civic participation across an entire population that already occupies one of the most legally precarious positions in American life.
The Whittier election officials who allegedly told the defendants to check the citizenship box have not, as far as public statements indicate, faced any formal consequences. Prosecutors have not announced investigations into whether the city's guidance created the very problem the state now seeks to punish. That asymmetry has not gone unnoticed by critics of the prosecutions.
Investigators and the court will need to determine what training, if any, Whittier election workers received on the distinction between nationals and citizens. They will also need to assess whether the state's voter registration form itself contributed to the confusion by failing to include a "U.S. national" option. Those answers could reshape how Alaska handles voter eligibility for its American Samoan residents going forward.
Law and order means holding people accountable when they break the rules on purpose. It loses its moral force when the government punishes people for following the government's own bad advice.
