MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The Alabama Legislature is one step closer to prohibiting the state from selling voters’ phone numbers for commercial purposes.
The House passed House Bill 67, carried by Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellville, Thursday morning after being carried over and revisited with a Democratic amendment.
The bill would remove phone numbers from automatically being included in the voter rolls and prohibit their sale for commercial purposes. Current law allows the state to sell all personal information included in voter registration lists, except for Social Security numbers.
Kiel said on the House floor Thursday that he brought the bill because his constituents complained about the excessive robocalls they receive. The bill will make sure the state is not “complicit” in spam calls, he said.
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 data for the entire state would be around $38,000. Kiel previously told ADN that figure is higher than the cost to obtain the voting roll for every other state in the country combined.
Democrats amended the bill on the floor twice. Rep. Kenyatte Hassell, D-Montgomery, brought the first amendment to clarify that campaign activities do not constitute the commercial use prohibited by the bill.
During the first floor discussion of the bill, Democrats objected to losing access to voters’ contact information.
Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile, opposed the bill because she said it would make it harder to communicate with the people she represents. Drummond said she gets her constituents’ phone numbers from the voter roll so that she can conduct polls and connect with voters.
“This list is something that’s terribly important for us to gain what our folks want from us as elected officials,” Drummond said. “So I see this as something that’s going to be detrimental to not only me as a Democrat but also to you as a Republican.”
Rep. Phillip Ensler, D-Montgomery, later brought a friendly amendment. It addressed some Democrats’ worries about contacting constituents by allowing voters to opt in to having their phone numbers on the voter roll.
The bill passed by a vote of 85-16. It now heads to the Senate.