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.
Has the Billboard Hot 100 caught the Holy Ghost?
Brittany dives into the economy behind Christian contemporary music
Arizona woman to serve 8 years for identity theft scheme benefiting North Korea
Christina Chapman was sentenced to prison this week for her role in a scheme that the DOJ said used stolen American identities in order to help illegally employ North Koreans in U.S. companies.
Lawmakers seek to ban federal agents from wearing masks
ICE says its employees have good reasons to hide their faces from protesters who want to dox them online, but Democrats say masked federal agents evokes "secret police," and the practice should be banned.
Independent grocery stores have had a tough five years. SNAP cuts will make it harder
The bulk of sales for many independent grocers come from SNAP. Cuts to the program could leave some making hard decisions about their future.
Education Department says it’s releasing more than $5 billion in frozen grants
The grants fund a wide range of education programs, including migrant education, services for English language learners and adult education.
Are you a single mom? We want to hear from you about your challenges and life experiences
About 40% of all births in America are to unmarried women according to the U.S. Census. Are there situations and challenges that are unique to single moms? We'd like to hear about them.