Georgia is setting early voting records, and Trump supports it. Why Alabama does not

Georgia voters are breaking records for early voting with more than 726,000 votes cast within three days, a number that is greater than the entire population of Jefferson County.

But no one who lives in Jefferson County has the same opportunity as voters in the neighboring Peach State to cast their vote weeks before the Nov. 5 election.

Alabama remains one of three states without any early in-person voting options. But despite almost universal early voting, and even with the recent endorsement of the practice by former President Donald Trump, Alabama appears less likely to budge from its stance opposing it.

Recent Alabama secretaries of state and GOP leaders have long said “No” to early voting, and legislation that would authorize it from Democratic lawmakers often goes nowhere.

Republican Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, in a statement to AL.com Thursday, said his position remains unchanged: Elections, he says, should take place on an Election Day and not started in the month of October.

“Since before I was elected as Secretary of State, I have been clear that I believe in Election Day, not election month,” Allen said. “Alabamians deserve a fair, secure, and transparent election. Initiatives like no excuse absentee voting and expanded early voting that we see in other states can lead to dishonest and untrustworthy elections.”

The leader of the state’s Republican Party echoes Allen’s views. In Alabama, the GOP is in charge of all the constitutional offices and holds supermajority status in the Legislature.

“Alabama does have the absentee provision for those who are unable to vote on Election Day, which has worked very well for our State and our voters,” said John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. “We also have the ability to count all of our votes on the day of the election. The normal concerns that would require early voting are not factors here. The bottom line is, whenever possible, we should have Election Day, not Election Month.”

Constituents want it

Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire are the only states that do not provide for early voting options for voters outside absentee balloting. The three states also require an excuse to vote absentee. In Alabama, absentee ballots are allowed for those who are ill, traveling, incarcerated or working a shift that coincides with polling hours.

Four years ago, Alabama did allow for in-person absentee voting through an order issued by Gov. Kay Ivey at the start of the pandemic. All voters had to do was cite the COVID-19 virus as a valid excuse to vote absentee ahead of that year’s election. And a lot of them did so: Absentee voting shot up to record levels, with more than 300,000 ballots cast ahead of that year’s November general election, representing 14% of the total votes cast, and far surpassing the 89,000 absentee ballots submitted in 2012.

One year later, the COVID-19 excuse was removed from the ballot. A year after that, during the 2022 statewide elections, 45,756 voters turned in an absentee ballot or 3.2% of the total votes cast.

“My constituents often tell me that they want early voting and ask why Alabama does not have it,” said Rep. Adline Clarke, D-Mobile, who has sponsored past voter reform measures in the Legislature and was the sponsor of an early voting bill in 2021. The recent versions of the bill have been sponsored by Rep. Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville.

“During my 11 years in the Legislature, these bills never saw the light of day,” Clarke said. “That is unfortunate because early voting would provide voters more opportunities to vote in today’s hectic society rather than just one day.”

She added, “I truly believe early voting would increase voter turnout in Alabama.”

Sagging turnout

David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, also believes early voting would help Alabama improve turnout, which he says is in decline compared to other states over the past decade.

According to his information, Alabama’s ranking in voter turnout relative to other states = shows a substantial decline from being No. 33 of 50 states including the District of Columbia in 2016, to No. 47 in 2022.

The ranking dropped to No. 39 in 2018, and then to No. 42 in 2020.

The rankings also do not take into account municipal elections, which have shown abysmal turnouts in some of Alabama’s largest cities. Fewer than a quarter of voters showed up to cast ballots during the 2021 municipal elections in Birmingham and Mobile.

“It’s not possible to extrapolate early voting or overall turnout from a very small number of days of early voting, and I’d be reluctant to suggest that early and mail voting by themselves increase turnout,” Becker said. “Many states have not yet begun their early voting periods, with North Carolina (starting Thursday), and several other states starting next week.”

“However, it is also true that Alabama is one of only three states in the country that do not offer early in-person voting,” he added. “It is also true that Alabama is one of only 14 states that does not allow voters to cast their ballots by mail without an excuse. It is also true that Alabama ranks near the bottom of the states in voter turnout and the state’s turnout relative to other states is declining.”

Becker also argues that early and mail-in voting is popular in most states because those methods “enhance election security and integrity.” Alabama was the earliest state to send out absentee ballots in the mail. The first of the ballots were sent out on Sept. 11.

“Spreading voting out over a number of days, via a number of methods, means that the system is far more resilient against potential challenges, including cyberattacks and disinformation, as well as things like power outages, traffic and weather events,” he said. “Early voting also serves as an early warning system for voter fraud, enabling election officials to detect any potential efforts to commit fraud, extremely rare as it is, well before Election Day.”

Other options

Election law experts believe there is little recourse for advocates of early in-person voting in states that do not have it outside political pressure.

For Republicans, that pressure could come from within. Trump, who has long criticized early and mail-in voting, is urging people to vote early and by mail and is advocating for expanding voting access in the battleground state of North Carolina after it was hard hit by Hurricane Helene.

North Carolina voters are showing up in large numbers, and breaking records. More than 350,000 people showed up during the first day of early voting on Thursday, setting a record.

“Up until this year, Donald Trump has said, ‘don’t vote early and you can’t trust it’ but this year, he’s saying ‘get your vote in early’ and the Republican Party is making the same message,” said Charles Bullock III, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, who voted early on Thursday during a process he said lasted only “six to seven minutes.” He said that 4,600 people in his county had already voted – the equivalency of the population of Alabama cities like Loxley and Childersburg.

Alabama, unlike North Carolina and Georgia, is not a battleground state. Trump is expected to easily defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in Alabama by a wide margin.

Aside from political pressure, the lack of early voting could be challenged in federal court.

Derek Muller, an expert in election law at Notre Dame, said there are legal theories someone could raise arguing that the right to vote is being “heavily burdened” without an early voting option. But, he said, courts are not likely to get involved and will opt to the state’s political processes.

Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, also said he doesn’t see a viable path through the court. He said that Congress could take up the matter, but only if Democrats win the House and Senate, which pundits do not believe will happen, and then opt to get rid of the filibuster.

“The more likely way that could happen is if Congress requires it for federal elections via a statute,” he said. “If Democrats control the House, Senate and presidency and they get rid of the filibuster, that could happen.”

Legal actions

Legal action has occurred in Alabama ahead of the election, focused on a purge of the voter rolls and with the state’s so-called ballot harvesting bill.

U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, a Trump appointee in 2020, ordered Allen’s agency earlier this week to stop his program of flagging possible cases of noncitizens registering to vote, and to restore active voting status to those were removed from the voter rolls.

The program purged more than 3,000 people from the voter rolls and referred them to Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s Office for possible prosecution. Of those, more than 2,074 have since been deemed eligible to vote.

Allen has said he would comply with the judge’s order.

Late last month, a federal judge also blocked the enforcement of a new state law intended to punish those who help disabled Alabama voters fill out or submit absentee ballots. That law, backed by Allen’s office, makes it a crime to receive payment or to pay someone to distribute or collect absentee ballot applications.

Allen, in his comments to AL.com, said his focus on the absentee ballots this year is to ensure the process “promotes election integrity” and protects the absentee ballots cast in elections.

“That process is now more secure than it ever has been in Alabama,” he said.