Elections are secure, voting rights are threatened, and have a plan to vote: SPLC lawyer

“Generally, it’s fair to say that elections in America are secure, elections in Alabama are secure, and voters deserve to trust that their voice will be heard when they cast a ballot on Election Day or absentee,” Jess Unger told APR on Thursday.

A senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Unger is part of the team working on the voting rights lawsuits the SPLC is involved with in Alabama.

“Voting rights are contested in Alabama, and forcefully so since 2020. I think the pandemic shook up voting patterns all across the country and that was true in Alabama,” he explained. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve seen continued threats to voting rights, especially the voting rights of people of color and people with disabilities in Alabama.” (Last month a federal judge issued an injunction against SB 1, which the SPLC has argued would prevent disabled and blind voters from receiving needed assistance with voting).

Most recently, as part of a coalition of voting rights organizations, the SPLC filed a lawsuit on behalf of Alabama voters improperly removed from the voter rolls by Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen.

A consistent advocate of “election integrity” and vector of conspiracy theories about noncitizens voting, Allen removed over 3,000 people from state voter rolls who had been issued a noncitizen identification number at some point. After Allen “admitted that his purge list included thousands of United States citizens,” a U.S. District Court judge ordered him to undo the purge and issue a clarifying press release.

Purging supposed noncitizens from voter rolls is hardly an Alabama-specific occurrence though. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of the United States allowed Virginia to continue purging 1,600 people from the state’s voter registration rolls in a ruling Allen called “a victory for the U.S. Constitution.” A 6-3 decision, support for the stay was split along party lines.

Unger said though that he believes there are “some facts and law differences” between the Virginia case and the Alabama case. Namely, Virginia has same-day voter registration, so citizens who are improperly purged could re-register and still vote.

But in Alabama, where the window to register to vote closed on October 21st, people who are removed from the voter rolls but ought to be allowed to vote would not be able to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.

Another one of the SPLC’s lawsuits is set to go to trial later this month. Filed in 2021, the lawsuit alleges that the state legislative districts drawn based on the 2020 U.S. Census dilute the power of Black voters and violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A preliminary injunction in a similar case, Allen v. Milligan, was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023, forcing Alabama to redraw the state’s Congressional maps and create two minority opportunity districts. The eventually redrawn district map created the most competitive Congressional district in Alabama this year: the newly redrawn 2nd District, where Shomari Figures is likely but not guaranteed to beat Republican candidate Caroleene Dobson and double Alabama Democrats’ representation in Congress.

Some of the SPLC’s cases have had or may have ramifications for next week’s elections, but Unger said that all of the cases are solely meant to protect Alabamians’ voting rights and ensure federal law is obeyed.

“All four of our cases on voting rights issues in Alabama will continue,” Unger told APR. “None of them are tied or expiring with the conclusion of the November general election, all of them have to do with issues that extend beyond Election Day.”

Unger also provided some basic advice for voters who are worried about the upcoming election or haven’t thought about how they’ll be casting their vote yet.

“The most important thing for any individual voter is to make sure that they have a plan to vote and that their registration status is what they think it is,” Unger affirmed.

“They can check the registration status on AlabamaVotes.gov and then make a plan to vote from there,” he continued. “If anything does go wrong, of course we do recommend that they tell a poll worker if a poll worker is handy and available. And if not, call the election protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.”

Election Day is next Tuesday, November 5th. You can find your polling place here and they will close at 7pm.