Erica Dunning is proud of her tidy house, built by Habitat for Humanity in a quiet Chalkville neighborhood, and her job working for Jefferson County. But she’s not too proud to admit that, once upon a time, she needed help to make ends meet.

Since last year, Lorenzo French says he’s helped about 50 people in rural Greene County regain their ability to vote. Many of them were improperly removed from voter rolls because they had a felony conviction, though not the type that should have banned them from voting, French said. Others didn’t have photo identification, a requirement to vote in Alabama since 2014.

Five years ago, Birmingham poet Emma Bolden faced an excruciating decision. She was 33. She wasn’t married and had no children, but she was considering a hysterectomy because of decades of health issues. That decision and the subsequent surgery became a theme for her latest collection of poems called “House is an Enigma.”

A statewide DMV computer outage Thursday morning prohibited some residents from updating their driver’s licenses just days ahead of Monday’s voter registration deadline. But it’s unclear how many were affected.

So far, the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative in Jefferson County has generated more questions than answers. The biggest question: How did 3,876 sexual assault kits not get submitted to the Department of Forensic Sciences for testing?

Just before the deadline closed, Cara McClure and Kari Powell submitted the paperwork to run for the Public Service Commission. They didn’t know one another beforehand, but they ended up on a phone call just after the midnight deadline talking about their similar platforms and how, despite having never run for political office, they would each need to hit the ground running.