MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A series of recently filed bills in the Alabama Legislature demonstrate the ongoing partisan split among lawmakers when it comes to election reform, with Republican lawmakers backing efforts to strengthen election integrity, and Democratic lawmakers, voter accessibility.
House Bill 30, for instance, filed in late August by Rep. Debbie Wood, R-Valley, would require each county in the state to conduct a post-election audit after every county and statewide general election.
“If we’re going to uphold the integrity of the election process, we need to, on our end, ensure that their vote is counted, and that the bad ones do not,” Wood told Alabama Daily News. “We’re the last state that hasn’t passed something (on mandating post-election audits).”
Wood said she had already met with and received support for the bill from House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, and would begin meeting with members of the Alabama Senate in November to garner their support.
Alabama Republicans, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, have passed in recent years a number of new laws seeking to strengthen election integrity and target voter fraud, as have Republican lawmakers across the country.
Perhaps most notable, Senate Bill 1, which became law earlier this year, made it a Class B felony for someone to pay another person for assistance with an absentee ballot application, and was an attempt to crack down on ballot harvesting, per its sponsor, Sen. Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen has also made election integrity a key priority of his office, having testified before a U.S. Senate Committee earlier this year on the topic, and recently, implemented and championed a new process to remove non-citizens from voter rolls.
I have been clear that I will not tolerate the participation of noncitizens in our elections. I have even gone so far as to testify before a US Senate Committee regarding the importance of this issue. #alpolitics https://t.co/dUDybKkIWN
— Wes Allen (@WesAllenAlabama) August 13, 2024
Conversely, the Alabama Senate’s eight Democrats signed on to Senate Bill 7, dubbed the Alabama Voting Rights Act, which aims to enact sweeping reforms to increase voter accessibility, such as by implementing automatic restoration of voting rights for eligible Alabamians and eliminating qualifications for absentee voting.
On vote restoration, existing law requires eligible Alabamians who lost their right to vote after a felony conviction to apply to the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles to have their rights restored. On absentee voting, only those who meet certain criteria are eligible to vote absentee.
Sponsored by Sen. Kirk Hatcher, D-Montgomery. Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, is a co-sponsor.
“Republicans are making it harder for people to vote when they should be making it easier for people to vote; no-excuse absentee (voting) gives people an opportunity to vote in advance, just in case something comes up with work (or) in the event their child is sick,” Coleman told ADN Tuesday.
“…The other portion of the bill that’s important is the restoration portion. When a person has paid their debt to society and paid their restitution, he or she should have the ability to vote in this country.”
The bill also includes a provision that allows an Alabamian with a disability to receive assistance in mailing their absentee ballot, something that existing law does not explicitly allow.
Rep. Adline Clarke, D-Mobile, will carry SB7 in the House, but has also filed her own bill in an effort to strengthen voter accessibility. That bill, House Bill 31, is near-identical to the aforementioned inclusion in SB7 that permits Alabamians with disabilities to receive assistance mailing absentee ballots.
“I filed my bill because I have lots of senior citizens in my district, and often get calls from those seniors wanting help with absentee voting, or completing the absentee ballot application,” Clarke told ADN.
“Right now, it would be illegal for them to have even a family member take their absentee ballot to the post office to mail it, and that just does not make common sense.”
Clarke said that her bill has already received the support of the Alabama League of Women Voters, a nonprofit organization that has temporarily halted their voter outreach operations in response to the passage of SB1.
Rep. Bob Fincher, R-Woodland, who chairs the House committee on elections, told ADN Wednesday that he was doubtful that the Alabama Voting Rights Act would make it through his committee.
“We fought that battle a couple of years ago in the same committee, in my committee, that bill came up and was voted down, so it’s nothing new,” Fincher told ADN. “I would not think the bill would have an excellent chance of passage. I think the bill would have some problem getting through committee.”
However, on Clarke’s more narrow bill, HB31, Fincher said he was open to giving it a “look.”
Ultimately, Fincher said his priority when it came to election reform, much like Wood, was strengthening election integrity.
“A lot of people have questions about the integrity of the system, and we want to make sure that our system has the highest level of integrity, and that voters, when we announce our vote totals, that they can count on those being accurate,” he said.
Wood expressed concerns over what she considered to be security shortfalls of existing voting technology in the state, which largely relies on paper ballots and electronic vote tabulators.
“We are dealing with machines that are at least ten years old, or older, that are counting our votes,” Wood said.
“Now, those machines are tested before they’re taken to the polling center, but then, they’re often put on a flatbed truck and carried to the polling centers; anything can happen to a machine, and we have no way of knowing that the technology that we’re using is doing its job.”
For voting tabulators, Alabama primarily uses the DS200 ballot scanning device in conjunction with paper ballots. These devices are prohibited by law from having the capability to connect to the internet or phone networks.
However, Wood said that she had heard from a constituent that the DS200 tabulators have a security shortfall that could allow Alabamians to vote “20 times if they wanted to” using a homemade paper ballot.
No instances of this have been reported, however, with only 20 confirmed instances of voter fraud in the state since the year 2000, according to The Heritage Foundation, none of which involved homemade paper ballots.
Wood’s bill is scheduled to first be heard in the House Ways and Means General Fund Committee, SB7 in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and HB31 in the House Constitution, Campaigns and Elections Committee.
The 2025 legislative session starts Feb. 4.