One of the the first orders of business for Secretary of State Wes Allen when he took office last November was to get the state out of the controversial voter roll tracking system ERIC. He’s since been working to implement a better “Alabama-based” solution: one voters can be confident is free of corruption and outside control.
Allen joined 1819 News CEO Bryan Dawson on “1819 News: The Podcast” to discuss the new voter roll system called AVID, which stands for Alabama Voter Integrity Database. So far, it’s identified thousands of people who, for various reasons, needed to be taken off the state’s voter rolls.
“We talked about an Alabama-based solution. We got it with four prongs,” Allen said. “We own the server. The server is in Alabama. It’s in Montgomery County. We can put our hands on it … It’s so important that we got it here in Alabama, and I just want people to understand the team we got in place; they’re first-round draft picks in that office.”
Allen’s four-prong approach includes:
Interagency agreement with ALEA to track people who move out of state via driver’s licenses and other ID applications.
National Change of Address file kept by the United States Postal Service.
Social Security Death Index for Alabaians who die while out of state.
State partnerships, including with all border states, with more to be added.
Allen said, except for the deceased, it takes four years to remove a name from state voter rolls once identified, per federal regulations.
“Some of the critics have said, ‘Well, you got out of a 31-state group of states that shares data [ERIC]. Now you only got just a couple states or whatever that’s signed up with you.’ That’s not true,” Allen said.
“As a Secretary of State, I bring my own conservative philosophy. You know my track record,” he continued. “In 2020, we saw how things kind of got away from some states when some states let some policies get away from them. But I believe in Election Day, not Election Month. I believe we’re not going to have mass mail voting in Alabama … Our tabulators will never be connected to the internet.”
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email daniel.taylor@1819news.com.
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