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This week, the Alabama House of Representatives passed HB30, introduced by Rep. Debbie Wood, R-District 38, which would require post-election audits after every county and statewide general election in Alabama.
In particular, the bill — also known as the Alabama Post-Election Audit Act — would require an audit to be performed on one race in a randomly selected precinct in each county after any general election.
Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-District 60, questioned the bill on the House floor, asking how the audits could accurately detect instances of voter fraud if they are only conducted in one race and precinct per county.
Givan also raised concerns that Republican rhetoric around elections may actually raise undue fears over electoral integrity in the state, casting doubt on the results of Alabama’s elections without any substantial evidence of mass voter fraud actually taking place.
“At the end of the day, it creates further a false narrative that there’s so much cheating in Alabama, and it really isn’t,” Givan said.
Rep. Thomas Jackson, D-Clark, also raised some tentative concerns. “We already have integrity in our elections,” he stated, questioning the need for HB30.
Jackson asked Wood if any Alabamians were arrested on voter fraud charges after the last general election in the state. “Not to my knowledge… but we didn’t do an audit either,” Wood replied.
Rep. Mary Moore, D-Jefferson, argued that the cost of the bill outweighed its potential benefits, as the state already requires automatic recounts when a public office or statewide ballot measure is decided by 0.5 percent of the votes or less in a general election. She also criticized the legislation as an “insult to those men and women that have served as Secretaries of State and guardians of our elections” for continuing to question the fairness of Alabama’s elections.
“We don’t have any evidence from any of our Secretaries of State that we have had any problems with our elections. In those areas that there were, they were minor problems, they took care of them,” Moore said.
“Now [is the time] for us to be good stewards of the taxpaying dollars that we have and rather than to pass something to require more and more audits,” she added, noting the current rollback of federal funding for various statewide programs by the Trump administration.
Rep. Bob Fincher, R-Randolph, echoed Rep. Givan’s concerns that the scale of the audits would be too small to notice any potential voter fraud in an election. “By the time you pick one precinct and one race in that precinct, if there were some illegitimacy to the election the odds of your stumbling upon it would be very, very rare,” Fincher stated.
“And I honestly believe that our state has the most secure elections of any of the 50 states,” Fincher added.
Despite the concerns raised by Fincher and the other members, the House ultimately voted in favor of HB30, passing it with a vote of 63 Yeas to 30 Nays with seven abstentions.
“This is the beginning of our effort to keep Alabama protected from illegal voting. Our citizens need to know that we are securing their votes and that election integrity is a priority,” Wood told APR after the bill’s passage.
