If Alabama Democrats have their way, your vote for president, Congress, governor, the Alabama Legislature and other important offices could soon be canceled by a convicted murderer, rapist, child molester, or even a terrorist.
House Bill 60 has been introduced with 25 co-sponsors and would erase current restrictions and automatically restore voting rights to felons convicted of “crimes of moral turpitude” upon their release from prison.
For decades in Alabama, all convicted felons, regardless of the crimes they committed, had their voting rights permanently stripped unless they formally applied for restoration and submitted to an investigative process that often took up to three years to complete because of a 3,000 ex-inmate backlog.
In 2003, Gov. Bob Riley vetoed a bill that would have automatically restored voting rights for ex-felons, but after protests and demonstrations led by Jesse Jackson and other African American leaders, he compromised and signed legislation that still required a formal application but shortened the approval process to a couple of months.
But all of that changed in 2006 when the Alabama Supreme Court issued an order stating that only felons convicted of crimes of moral turpitude may be denied their voting rights and cited Amendment 579 of our 1901 Constitution as the reason.
Crimes of moral turpitude, according to a subsequent law passed by the Legislature, include murder; rape; kidnapping; sodomy; sexual torture; enticing, soliciting, or committing an unlawful sexual act upon a child; possessing or disseminating child pornography; possessing, attempting to use, or using an explosive, biological, or bacteriological weapon; treason; incest; drug trafficking; child torture or abuse; elder abuse and about two dozen other equally despicable felonies.
These are the people that some believe should be anointed with automatic voting rights the moment their sentence ends. These are the people that some believe should choose and elect our state’s public officials. These are the people that some representatives believe should cancel the votes of moral, law-abiding citizens.
I disagree 100%.
Just as these dishonorable and unworthy individuals are denied their Second Amendment gun rights for the rest of their lives, they should be deprived of their voting rights, as well. At the very least, they should be expected to take proactive steps to secure their lost rights rather than being rewarded like a good child being given a cookie.
If this reason alone leads you to condemn the proposed bill, I will borrow the famous words of television pitchmen and say, “But wait, there’s more.”
Under current Alabama law, absentee voting by mail is restricted for use by those who are sick or physically incapable of attending the polls, who will be absent from the county on Election Day, who have a work shift coinciding with voting hours, who is a caregiver, who is an election worker, or military members who are deployed.
The bill, however, will allow any person to vote by mail simply because they choose to with no reasons or excuses required, but that provision ignores Alabama’s rich, colorful and active history of absentee voter fraud.
In years past, a Hale County bank in which absentee primary ballots suspected of being fraudulently cast were stored was burned; prosecutors have uncovered vote-buying schemes involving beer, liquor and money; and convictions have been routinely secured for irregularities involving mail-in voting.
As recently as this October, a Mobile nursing home worker was indicted on two felonies and a misdemeanor charge for forging the signature of an incapacitated patient by using his hand to draw an X on an absentee ballot application.
The examples cited above only scratch the surface of Alabama’s fast-and-loose, “Wild West” history of mail-in balloting abuses, and the proposed bill seeks to make such fraud both easier and routine.
At a time when our election system should be more secure and less susceptible to fraud, this bill would work to make it less secure and more susceptible to nefarious shenanigans.
The Alabama Legislature has already enacted safeguards like photo voter identification requirements and a strong ballot harvesting prevention bill that Democrats are currently working to overturn in court, and we should put in place even more protections like them.
Join me in shielding our honestly-cast votes from being canceled and tell these representatives that rapists, terrorists and child predators belong behind bars, not in the polling place.
Andrew Sorrell is the Alabama State Auditor.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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