Some Voters Required to Verify Information at the Polls
An attempt to update the state’s voter rolls left some Alabama voters confused and angry at the polls in Tuesday’s US Senate primary. That was the race to fill the seat formerly held by Jeff Sessions.
Amy Wright has been voting in the same polling for the last 18 years. On Tuesday, she walked up to the poll worker at the Homewood public library, who looked up her name. “And she looked me up and she said, ‘You’re not on here.’ And I said, what?”
Turned out Wright and her husband had been moved to the inactive voter rolls. Wright had to fill out some paperwork before she was allowed to vote. “It’s a verification form,” she says. “You have to write down your name, address, previous address, driver’s license number. And a poll worker had to sign off on it. Wright says she’s voted in every election for years. And what happened Tuesday seemed suspicious. “You know, somebody could blame it on a computer glitch or whatever. But there is absolutely no reason my name would not have been on that list.”
Wright wasn’t the only one who was bumped to the inactive voter rolls. The same thing happened to Congressman Mo Brooks, who was a candidate in the Senate primary. Also, state Rep. Patricia Todd, and a federal judge in Montgomery.
Amy Wright says she has “absolutely zero” faith in Alabama’s voting system.
Merrill says from January to March, his office mailed every registered Alabama voter a postcard requesting information verification. He says that’s required by the National Voter Registration Act. “This is the first time in the history of the state that Alabama’s been fully compliant with the law,” he says.
He says problems stemmed from verification notices his office sent bouncing back to the post office. They’d end up at county election offices, and residents would be knocked off the active voter rolls. Merrill says his office has no plans to look into this any further, and that no one was denied the right to vote. It’s unclear how many of Alabama’s 3.3 million registered voters were affected. Turnout in Tuesday’s primary was just under 18 percent.
Alabama Black Belt’s sewer crisis a tougher fix for residents in manufactured homes
Poor sanitation has long plagued residents in Alabama’s Black Belt. For people with manufactured houses, finding a solution has been more challenging.
In Birmingham, Black men’s groups work to save young men from the cycle of gun violence
As the city inches closer to its homicide record, community members are trying to address a sense of fatalism and lack of opportunity felt by some young men.
Former Brazilian president indicted over alleged coup plot
Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro and several others have been charged with attempting to overthrow incoming government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022.
How do you solve a crime at a retirement home? Get ‘A Man on the Inside’
Michael Schur wrote for the The Office and created The Good Place. His new show for Netflix features Ted Danson as a widowed retiree who goes undercover in a retirement community.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who took aim at crypto industry, to step down in January
Gensler said he would step down on Jan. 20, when Donald Trump will inaugurated as the next president. Gensler took big enforcement actions against the crypto industry.
Russia launched an experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, the U.S. says
Ukraine raised alarm suggesting Russia may have used an intercontinental ballistic missile to hit the city of Dnipro, but the U.S. National Security Council does not believe it was an ICBM.
