MONTGOMERY — House Democrats were in an especially combative mood on Tuesday, spending hours of debate time protesting the House calendar and a proposed bill changing the voter registration software used by Alabama's state and local election officials.
House Bill 479 (HB479) by State Rep. Bryan Brinyark (R-Northport) would remove the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) as a voter registration database that the board of registrars or the Secretary of State may use to identify voters whose addresses may have changed.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen announced in September 2023 the creation of a new voter integrity database called the Alabama Voter Integrity Database (AVID). Allen withdrew Alabama from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) in January after his inauguration.
AVID uses cross-checking with other states, data from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), the USPS National Change of Address file and social security death information. The substituted bill would require the state to use AVID instead of ERIC.
A Senate version of the bill, sponsored by State Sen. Wes Kitchens (R-Arab), passed the Senate last week. Former Secretary of State John Merrill openly opposed the Senate version. However, on Tuesday, he told 1819 News that he was unaware of the legislation being considered by the House.
Allen first notified ERIC of his plans to withdraw from the program before his inauguration, citing concerns with the organization's collection of personal data and its possible connection to prominent billionaire Democratic donor George Soros. However, the former Merrill disputed those claims and has vigorously defended ERIC in the years following his departure.
"This is a vast improvement from what we had," Brinyark told lawmakers. "The other was kind of a shell company. They wouldn't even let us know where their servers were. We don't know what state that information was being held. Here we are, giving personal information about Alabamians to the ERIC system that we are now getting away from and taking out of the code."
Since 2023, nine states have signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with Allen's office: Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
Brinyark presented the bill before the House body, settling in for an extended stay at the podium, since Democrats had already spent nearly two hours speaking at length on the proposed special order calendar and one previous bill.
Some speculated that the Democratic ire was caused by proposed legislation in the Senate related to the Birmingham Water Works Board.
Some speakers intimated that House Democrats were acting in solidarity with Senate Democrats after leadership began cloturing the ability of those in the Senate minority to filibuster bills and slow down the legislative process.
SEE: State Sen. Orr: 'We are probably looking at cloturing every bill' for rest of 2025 session
Regardless of the single cause or combination of causes, House Democrats set out to slow Tuesday's proceedings significantly, leading the House to pass only half of the 22 bills on the calendar.
Several Democratic lawmakers used debate time to complain about the legislative process, accusing House Republicans of steamrolling Democratic priorities, especially after the body voted down an amendment by State Rep. Aldine Clarke (D-Mobile) to prevent the state from using credit reporting information in voter roll cleanup.
"It's only y'all point of view that has any validity," said State Rep. Mary Moore (D-Birmingham). Anything that we bring up to try to make it better, you don't talk to us, you don't come in and try to say, 'well. Let's work with this.' And then, our only opportunity is to come – we can't do it in committee – we have to come to the floor, and still you won't work with us. So our issues that our people have don't matter."
Others used debate time to complain about voter registration update letters sent by Allen's office earlier this year. Mostly, Democrats opposed to the bill spent time engaging in incoherent monologues with no evident relevance to the bill.
Despite the bluster, the House passed the bill 74-28, sending it to the Senate for deliberation.
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