Hammering Alabama elections in search of a nail

  Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen doesn’t want to make voting easier. He’s always been clear on that.

  Take an interview Alabama’s elections chief did a few weeks ago. Allen said he opposed automatic voter registration (AVR), a program where a qualified voter gets registered when they do something like renew a driver’s license.

  “Registering to vote is a First Amendment issue in my mind,” he told a conservative radio host. “You’re exercising your speech. And I think that’s a slippery slope you go down when the government just automatically tells somebody that they’re going to be registered to vote. As long as I’m secretary of state, we’re not going down that path.”

Craig Ford: You should consider voting absentee this summer

  The Republican and Democratic Primary Runoff Elections are still scheduled to take place on July 14th, and many voters are understandably concerned about trying to vote while Alabama is seeing record numbers of new cases of the coronavirus.

  Part of Alabama’s recent spike in cases of COVID-19 is the result of Memorial Day events where large crowds gathered together, and it only stands to reason that forcing large crowds together again in just a few short weeks for this election could create yet another spike.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill's comments on voter registration are cynical, ignorant

  In an interview with a documentary filmmaker, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill attacked automatic voter registration as the “sorry and lazy way out” and cited the sacrifices made by civil rights leaders like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) as a reason not to make voting more accessible to more Americans.