Legislative Alert: I am excited to announce that after two months of discussion, debate, and work, Representative and Secretary of State Candidate John Merrill and I are filing a bill in the Alabama Legislature to protect against and prosecute voter fraud in this state. The goal of the bill is to protect voters against deception. More specifically, to address the issue of people who hold voter registration drives and only turn in the forms of people that they believe will vote a certain way.

On election day, 2012, I was unable to vote in the town I lived in because of this problem, which is rampant and well-documented in this state, especially in the Shoals area. I updated my registration information at a voter registration drive on campus, only to discover on election day that I was not registered to vote. I had not expected a voter ID card because I already knew that the individual on campus turned in all of her forms on the last possible day, 10 days before the election. When I went to the Registrar’s office, I discovered that I was far from the only person suffering from this problem. Apparently the individual running the voter drive had been well known for years at both the county board of registrars and the secretary of state’s office for filtering out the forms of anyone they thought would vote Republican. However, there was absolutely nothing that either department could do about it, because there is no state law on the books that allows them to prosecute this behavior. I posted my frustrations on Facebook and my story ended up on the 10:00 news that night on WHNT Channel 19, they interviewed me on campus.

Because of what happened, I approached John Merrill on Nov 1st about trying to solve this problem. He was very excited at my ideas and had me write everything up and send it to him. Together, we devised a two-part solution to this problem.

Part 1: Prosecution & Deterrent. Under the law, not turning in forms collected at a voter registration drive is a Class C Misdemeanor offense and prohibits anyone convicted of voter fraud from working at a voter registration drive for a year after their conviction. Anyone holding a voter registration drive has 72 business hours to turn in the forms after it is completed. The bill as proposed codifies this.

Part 2: Policy. The way voter drives are done needs to change. Currently, anyone can walk in and request an unlimited number of voter registration forms and do whatever they want with them. The problem is, a voter registration form is a legally binding document that includes a sworn statement. For someone else to offer to turn this document in to the Board of Registrars on behalf of an individual, they must assume legal responsibility for that document and have a proof of permission to act as proxy. We propose to solve this by slightly changing the way the forms are printed and used. Anyone requesting forms for a voter drive will get them, and the registrars office will be required to issue them, that will not change. But when someone requests the form, special forms will be printed with a unique identifyer on it tying the forms to that individual through preexisting state databases. The person who checks out these forms then becomes legally liable for them, and may turn any leftovers back in if they want to avoid them being stolen. For instance, if I requested forms it could have a “DRIVE: 189007″ on the top corner, or something similar. Any board of registrar or secretary of state employee could put that number into their database and see my contact information. Also, at the bottom of the form, there ill be a tear-off tab with this same identifyer which the person hosting the drive will be required to tear off and hand to the person registering as a receipt. This essentially gives the person receiving the forms the legal ability to act as a proxy and submit these forms on behalf of the person filling them out, and provides proof of that transaction so that if the forms never reach their destination, that receipt can be used as evidence that the form was filled out, and the individual can be prosecuted for voter fraud.

This solution is very low cost for the state and will have virtually no impact on the efficiency or complexity of holding a voter drive or registering at a voter drive. However, this cannot be codified as a new law, as it would create logistic problems if any of the technology or process was change. This would need to be implemented as an administrative policy by the Secretary of State’s office. John and I will be working to accomplish this, which will be especially easy if he wins his election for that office.

The bill is supposed to be pre-filed today, but is not in the Alisondb system at the time I wrote this. If you’d like a copy of the bill, send me your e-mail address and I will send you the PDF. I am looking forward to working with Representative Merril and other members of the legislature as we continue to work on this bill and refine it. Personally, I’d like to see the punishment upon conviction made a bit more severe. The first committee meeting wil be on or around January 22cd. I will keep you updated!

Special thanks to Ray Wren, Chairman of the Lauderdale County Board of Registrars for working with me on this and helping me come up with practical solutions!

Side note: While we are each responsible for registering ourselves, there is nothing wrong with someone offering to make it more convenient for people to register in mass quantities. This protects the people doing so on both sides of that transaction from being defrauded.



Read this original article as well as many others at treyedwardsal.wordpress.com