Alabama organizations, state nonprofits and national voting rights advocacy groups are calling for a retraction to remove access for ballot casting in the state. The coalition warns in a letter that legal action could be taken against a high-ranking official in the Yellowhammer State if reversals are not made.
This comes as Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen recently directed that more than 3,200 noncitizens registered to vote in the state should be changed to an inactive status. The residents were identified through noncitizen identification numbers issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“I have been clear that I will not tolerate the participation of noncitizens in our elections,” Allen said in a press release to his website. “This is not a one-time review of our voter file. We will continue to conduct such reviews to do everything possible to make sure that everyone on our file is an eligible voter.”
The Associated Press reports incidents where noncitizens cast ballots in federal elections are rare. A federal law enacted in 1996 makes it a crime for non-citizens to cast ballots in federal elections. Alabama has banned that practice for all elections.
As Allen is issuing a call for removal, groups like the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, the ACLU of Alabama, the League of Women Voters of Alabama, Alabama Value progress, the NAACP of Alabama and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have alleged the move violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in three different ways. The first purported breach includes going against a provision of the federal law barring removal of voters from rolls a specific amount of time ahead of an election.
“The NVRA says states need to wrap up their list maintenance activities for the election cycle 90 days before Election Day,” explained Jess Unger, Senior Staff Attorney for SPLC’s Democracy: Voting Rights Litigation. “That is to say, there's this quiet before Election Day when voters can have some confidence that if they're registered, they don't need to worry about it, and they can go and proceed to vote like they plan to do.”
Unger said the violation of the federal law comes into play here due to a mathematical stipulation.
“That 90 days before our November 5th Election Day this year is August 7th. The Secretary made his announcement on August 13th, and that suggests that there's a possibility that the Secretary had not wrapped up his program before 90 days,” he said.
The coalition of Alabama organizations and national groups allege the second violation from Allen’s call to remove voters from rolls disregards the NVRA’s uniform and nondiscriminatory provision, which directs states to ensure any eligible applicant remains registered to vote.
Unger warns that naturalized citizens in Alabama, who are eligible to cast a ballot, could be unfairly swept up and de-registered from rolls during the Boards of Registrars, in all 67 of Alabama’s counties, removal process of noncitizens.
“The Secretary only has one piece of information about these 3,000 or so people that his office has flagged for inactivation and removal, and that one piece of information is that they had an I.D. number from the United States Department of Homeland Security,” he explained. “The I.D. number is something that's issued to noncitizens, but many people who are not citizens of the United States become naturalized citizens through the naturalization process. [Allen] doesn't give any indication that he checked before he began to take steps to deregister these people.”
Lastly, Alabama and national voting rights advocacy groups allege the Secretary of State’s removal and re-registration system violates the NVRA’s requirements regarding necessary registration information.
Unger said asking naturalized Alabama residents who are already eligible to vote to once again show verification is discriminatory as U.S. born citizens are not asked to do so. He pointed out Alabama residents who are registered to vote have all already filled out the voter registration form, which includes a check box attesting they are a United States citizen.
“It sounds like his expectation is that they go through registering to vote all over again and also go through some kind of verification process,” he said. “He doesn't give a lot of detail on what that verification process is, but the problem is that providing additional documentary proof of citizenship requirements in the voter registration process is also something the courts have litigated several times, and the NVRA requires only the information necessary to register voters.”
The coalition of Alabama organizations and national groups say legal action could be taken against Secretary of State Allen if he does not issue a retraction over the call to remove registered voters from rolls.
