MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellville, has filed a bill that would prohibit the state of Alabama from selling phone numbers and other personal information from voter rolls for commercial purposes.
Current law allows the state to sell all personal information included in voter registration lists, except for Social Security numbers.
“Most voters do not know that their telephone number is being sold by the state of Alabama, and when they find that out, most are very upset about it,” Kiel said.
House Bill 67 would make sure the state is not “complicit” in robocalling and will protect Alabamians’ privacy, he said.
The bill has 33 co-sponsors. The bill is expected to get its first vote Wednesday in the House Constitution, Campaigns and Elections Committee.
It specifies that the secretary of state also would be forbidden from releasing emails, months and days of birth and voter ID and driver license numbers. Authorized government agencies at the local, federal and state level would still be able to access this confidential information.
“I support HB67, which will protect voter’s personal information,” said Secretary of State Wes Allen in a statement to ADN. “(House Bill) 67 will help cut down on spam telemarketing phone calls that are annoying to residents of our state.”
The other component of the bill is a $1,000 ceiling on how much the secretary of state could charge for voter registration lists.
It currently costs $0.01 per voter to obtain a voter roll, meaning the voting roll for the entire state of Alabama would be around $38,000. Kiel said that figure is higher than the cost to obtain the voting roll for every other state in the country combined.
Lowering the cost will be a step in making the voter roll readily available to people across the state, he said.
“It’s very important that people know who’s voting and that they know that if their neighbor’s voting who shouldn’t be voting,” Kiel said. “They could turn that person in, whether they’re a felon, they’re an illegal immigrant, whatever the case is. If they shouldn’t be voting and they’re on the voter roll, we need to know that so that we can take them off.”