|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
On Wednesday, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen signed a joint statement on election integrity with five other secretaries of state from Montana, Indiana, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Wyoming.
Allen stated in a press release that he was “proud to stand alongside other conservative election officials to publicly call for strong, common sense election integrity measures.”
“This statement emphasizes several areas of concern in election integrity and is meant to plainly and boldly declare the election policy positions of myself and my fellow Republican Secretaries of State,” he explained.
The joint statement calls President Biden’s Executive Order No. 14019 “a classic example of federal overreach” and “clearly unconstitutional.”
Issued in March 2021, the executive order tells federal agencies to “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote.” It also established new policies meant to help federal employees, people with disabilities, active-duty military members, select people in federal custody, and Native Americans vote.
Allen has previously attacked the executive order by describing it as part of a set of “policies that result in supplying non-citizens with a mechanism to register to vote in our state and all 49 other states.”
This is despite the executive order specifically mentioning “citizens’ opportunities to register to vote” [emphasis added] and despite the lack of evidence of non-citizens registering to vote and/or actually voting in any appreciable numbers.
The joint statement also continues relitigating the 2020 election by pointing out that various measures to expand voting access “must be specifically authorized by an official act of the state legislature.”
In 2020, several states made it easier to vote to account for the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. One complaint brought up during the Trump campaign’s unsuccessful attempts to overturn the election results, which the joint statement seems to be referring to, was that governors had used their emergency powers to expand voting without specific approval from the legislatures.
The statement also attacks specific election policies used by predominantly blue states, like the “blanket mailing of ballots to entire registration lists” (used in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Vermont, and D.C.).
In some ways, the statement Allen signed is even more radical than the current official stance of the Republican Party.
During the Republican National Convention, Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said “we, as a party, should be embracing things like mail-in voting and early voting.”
And back in April, Donald Trump posted that “ABSENTEE VOTING, EARLY VOTING, AND ELECTION DAY VOTING ARE ALL GOOD OPTIONS” on social media website Truth Social.
The joint statement, however, maintains that “the safest and most secure way to cast a ballot is on Election Day at a polling location.”
In a statement provided to AL.com columnist Kyle Whitmire on Thursday, Allen repeated that he still opposes “unsolicited mass mail-in voting” and “believe[s] in Election Day, not Election Month.”
