Every year, more and more United States citizens register to vote. From those newly 18 to others doing so years later, registering to vote is the first step to participating in the civil process.
Alabama has an estimated population of 5,143,030 as of 2024. Roughly 70 percent of those citizens are of voting age.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, Alabama had 3,708,804 registered voters in 2020 general election. Of those, only 2,329,114 actually voted in the general election.
The number of registered voters in 2022 decreased to 3,687,753, with only 1,423,409 actually voting in the midterms. As of Aug. 2024, the state has 3,768,164 registered voters.
More: With less than a month until Election Day, here’s what Alabama voters need to know
Ongoing court battles
Recently, Secretary of State Wes Allen instructed the Board of Registrars in state’s 67 counties to “immediately inactivate and initiate steps necessary to remove all individuals who are not United States Citizens” from Alabama’s voter registration list.
The SOS office had previously identified 3,251 people registered to vote in Alabama who were issued noncitizen IDs by the Department of Homeland Security. Multiple voting rights organizations, along with the Department of Justice, filed lawsuits against Allen, claiming these actions violate the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires that states must finish removing ineligible voters from registration lists no later than 90 days prior to a federal election.
“Instead of protecting Americans’ freedom to vote in the November election, Alabama is shamefully intimidating naturalized citizens and illegally purging qualified Americans from voter rolls,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president of Campaign Legal Center, one of the organizations involved in the lawsuit. “Our local election officials work hard to make sure only American citizens can vote. In practice, voter purges like what we are seeing in Alabama target naturalized citizens and prevent qualified Americans from exercising their right to vote.”
During this year’s legislative session, the state legislature passed a bill making reception of payment for assisting in the distribution, filling out, delivering and ordering of absentee ballots applications illegal, in an effort to prevent ballot harvesting in the state. Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill into effect March 20, criminalizing ballot harvesting as a Class C felony.
Soon after, the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, Greater Birmingham Ministries, League of Women Voters of Alabama and Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program filed suit against Allen, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and the state’s 42 District Attorneys, challenging that state-level action as violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, the Voting Rights Act, and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
Last month, U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor wrote that the law violated part of the Voting Rights Act that states voters who are blind, disabled or illiterate “may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice.” However, he allowed the rest of the law to go into effect.
The last day to register to vote in Alabama is Oct. 21. For more information, visit on Alabama’s 2024 elections and voter registration, visit sos.alabama.gov.
Victor Hagan is the Alabama Election Reporting Fellow for the USA TODAY Network. He can be reached at vhagan@gannett.com or on X @TheVictorHagan. To support his work, subscribe to the Advertiser.
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Publish date : 2024-10-09 22:55:00
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