A longtime state resident born in Florida and naturalized citizens are among the victims of Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen’s effort to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, according to a lawsuit they and others filed Friday in federal court in Birmingham.
Allen announced last month that 3,251 registered voters were issued noncitizen identification numbers, prompting him to tell boards of registrars in Alabama’s 67 counties to immediately take steps to remove any non-citizens from the voting rolls.
It is illegal for people who are not citizens to register to vote in Alabama. A federal law enacted in 1996 makes it a crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.
Allen sent the list of registered voters who received a non-citizen identification number to Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall — who is also being sued by the plaintiffs — for further investigation and possible criminal prosecution. Allen said the U.S. government declined his repeated requests for a list of non-citizens currently living in Alabama.
The Campaign Legal Center, Fair Elections Center, and Southern Poverty Law Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of James Stroop, who was born in Melbourne, Florida and has lived in Alabama since 1978; Roald Hazelhoff, a native of the Netherlands who became a legal permanent resident roughly 10 years ago and became a U.S. citizen in 2022; Carmel Michelle Coe, a native of England who moved to the United States after marrying her American husband in 1979 and became a U.S. citizen in 2021; and Emily Asplund Jortner, a Canadian-born woman who first came to the United States on a student visa in 1992 and became a U.S. citizen in 2022.
The plaintiffs, which refer to Allen’s plan as the “Purge Program,” say the effort “is burdensome, unnecessary, and discriminatory.
“It subjects registered, eligible voters identified under the Purge Program to intimidation in the form of a letter threatening them with unjustified criminal 61 prosecution and requires them to re-register under the Re-Registration Process in order to vote and be on the voter rolls,” the suit alleges.
The lawsuit accuses Allen of violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
“No American citizen should be denied their freedom to vote, and all Americans have the same freedom to vote regardless of where they were born. Instead of protecting Americans’ freedom to vote in the November election, Alabama is shamefully intimidating naturalized citizens and illegally purging qualified Americans from voter rolls,” Campaign Legal Center Senior Vice President said in a statement. “Our local election officials work hard to make sure only American citizens can vote. In practice, voter purges like what we are seeing in Alabama target naturalized citizens and prevent qualified Americans from exercising their right to vote. Our democracy works best when every American can participate without fear, and CLC will continue to fight for Americans’ freedom to vote.”
A spokeswoman for Allen said the office had not been served with the lawsuit as of Friday night.
“As a rule, the office does not comment on pending litigation where the secretary is a named defendant,” she said.
Stroop and Hazelhoff, the lawsuit claimed, received letters from Allen’s office that their voting registrations were deactivated and “placed on a path for removal from the statewide voter list” because they were previously issued noncitizen identification numbers.
In Stroop’s case, according to the suit, he was never issued such a number; while filing for unemployment assistance in 2021, he accidentally checked a box indicating he was a noncitizen. When the state Labor Department mailed him a letter about the form, he gave them a copy of his birth certificate to correct the error. In 2022, the department told Stroop the error was corrected.
As instructed by Allen’s letter, Stroop reapplied to vote since he was a U.S. citizen, but he has doubts whether his vote will be counted in November, according to the suit.
“While he was told verbally by the Marshall County Board of Registrars that his voter status is currently active, in light of the ongoing confusion over his citizenship and voter registration status—despite assurance years ago from the state of Alabama that the error regarding his citizenship status had been corrected—Plaintiff Stroop remains uncertain that he will be registered to vote on Election Day,” the lawsuit stated. “Plaintiff Stroop has received no written confirmation that he is an active registered voter in the State of Alabama or that the error regarding his citizenship status has been resolved.”
In Hazelhoff’s case, he also filed for unemployment in 2018 or 2019 while legally working in Alabama — before he was a U.S. citizen. According to the lawsuit, Hazlehoff’s citizenship status was not updated.
“Plaintiff Hazelhoff intends to vote in the 2024 general election. Although he is presently listed as active on the voter registration rolls, he remains uncertain whether he will be able to vote on November 5, 2024,” the suit contends. “Plaintiff Hazelhoff is further concerned and worried by Secretary Allen’s referral of him to the Attorney General for criminal investigation despite the fact that he has not violated the law.”
Coe and Jortner have not received a letter from Allen but “will likely be targeted by the Purge Program because they have previously received a noncitizen identification number,” the suit says.
In addition to the individual plaintiffs, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, and the League of Women Voters of Alabama.
“Secretary Allen’s actions are not making our elections any safer; instead, they are inactivating lawfully registered voters from the rolls and unnecessarily causing fear and intimidation,” said Kathy Jones, president of the League of Women Voters of Alabama, in a statement. “Alabama voters need to know that the League is here to fight for them and is committed to ensuring all voters have the opportunity and accurate information to exercise their right to vote.”
Bernard Simelton, president of the Alabama NAACP, said the organization “is again dismayed by the Alabama Secretary of State efforts to disenfranchise voters.
“We know that this is a nation wide effort to provide excuses for certain candidates to use if they lose the elections on November 5,” he said in a statement. “We are committed to doing all that we can to ensure that every voter votes and that every vote is counted despite what obstacles are put in our path.”
