MONTGOMERY, Ala. – A coalition of civil, voting and disability rights groups filed an injunction Friday to halt the state of Alabama from enforcing its new absentee ballot application law, signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in March.
Among the first bills introduced in the 2024 legislative session, Senate Bill 1 was an effort, supporters say, to prohibit the practice of ballot application harvesting, which is the collecting and submitting absentee applications on behalf of others.
The law prohibits this practice by creating severe criminal charges for those who pay or receive payment to assist another person with an absentee ballot application. For instance, it is now a Class B felony for an Alabamian to pay another person for assistance with their application, punishable with up to 20 years in prison.
Those same rights groups first sued the state over the ballot harvesting law in April, but Friday filed a proposed injunction in the hopes that the law’s implementation could be paused until Oct. 29 of this year, the last day to apply for an absentee ballot by mail for the 2024 general election.
The injunction, they hope, will allow time for a federal court to litigate the lawsuit before the next election following the upcoming 2024 General Election.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit on the groups’ behalf, said in a statement that the ballot harvesting law’s provisions were “vague, overbroad and undefined,” and that they would target Alabama’s elderly, incarcerated, disabled and low-literacy voters.
“SB1 chills neighbors and caretakers from assisting one another to exercise their voting rights,” said Jess Unger, senior staff attorney for voting rights at the Southern Poverty Law Center, in a statement. The SPLC is among the plaintiffs in the case.
“This measure not only undermines the essence of community support and civic culture but also obstructs the fundamental democratic process.”
Secretary of State Wes Allen praised the law as an election integrity measure in March, saying it prevents ballot harvesters from threatening the security of Alabama elections by making it illegal to pay or to be paid by a third-party organization to pre-fill and/or collect absentee ballot applications.
“Free and fair elections are the foundation of our constitutional republic,” Allen said. “The passage of SB1 signals to ballot harvesters that Alabama votes are not for sale.”
In the original lawsuit, the rights groups charge that the law is a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Voting Rights Act. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the SPLC, the Alabama NAACP, the League of Women Voters, and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program.
The lawsuit includes numerous accounts of the plaintiff groups, which often engage in voter drives, assisting the elderly in nursing homes by filling out and delivering absentee ballots on behalf of residents.
While the law makes an exception for those who are blind, have a disability or an inability to read or write, there is no exception regarding age, and no minimum value for a payment or gift for assistance on an absentee ballot.
Under the law as written, were a nursing home resident without the aforementioned disabilities to provide any form of payment or gift for assistance with an absentee ballot application, the individual assisting the resident would be guilty of a Class B felony.