By Paul DeMarco
So it appears that lawmakers will be called back to the Alabama statehouse on July 17th to draw new U.S. Congressional districts as required by a recent ruling of the Untied States Supreme Court. The court ruled that Alabama should establish two districts where a minority could be elected to represent the state in Congress, as of now there is one.
The first priority for Alabama State Representatives and Senators in July will be to pass a new map. However when legislators are back in Montgomery to debate and approve the new districts, there will also be time to take up another important election issue as well.
This past session a bill sponsored by Representative Jamie Kiel that would have banned ballot harvesting died on the last day legislators met this past Spring. The new law would have made it illegal to pay or be paid for the collection of absentee ballots delivered to polling places. The legislation had passed the Alabama House of Representatives overwhelmingly and a Senate Committee, thus, it was in a position to win approval from the full Senate but never made it to the calendar. There is no question that if it were up for a vote, the supermajority of Republican Senators would have sent the bill to the Governor to sign. Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen supported the legislation and cited the multiple convictions for fraud related to absentee ballots over the past decade as one of the impetus for the need of this new law.
With Democrats in a position to possibly pick up a second Congressional seat in Alabama in 2024, there will be hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in the state’s general election. Republicans hold a slim majority in the United States House of Representatives, thus the eyes of the Nation will be watching this general election in Alabama. Thus, you can count on major money being sent by national political action committees to the state for get out the vote efforts as we saw in the 2020 elections.
Governor Kay Ivey and lawmakers should agree that the integrity of Alabama elections are essential and cleaning up the absentee ballot process must be a priority. Hopefully, we will see this legislation considered along with the new Congressional maps to be drawn in the upcoming special session.
Paul DeMarco is a former member of the Alabama House of Representatives and can be found on Twitter @Paul_DeMarco