It is time to change how we vote. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the United States, it is more and more clear that traditional voting models are outdated and potentially dangerous. Alabama and America need to finally embrace voting by mail.
Currently, voting in Alabama is still very traditional relying primarily on voting in person.
In Alabama, absentee ballots by mail still require a reason for submission. Currently, the law requires that voters have a valid reason for submitting an absentee ballot that would keep them from the polls, and that a witness signs their ballot to verify this reason.
These are unnecessary hoops to jump through, though. The vast majority of states (31) do not require a reason to submit an absentee ballot, and, as we see election after election, they face no significant issues.
A Democratic proposal exists to eliminate the Alabama’s requirement of the reason on absentee ballots fulltime.
In some states, like Colorado and Oregon, they go even further by having vote by mail in place. In these systems, ballots are distributed by mail, and voters are able to return either in person or by dropping them off in the mail. And in those states, a majority of voters voted by mail in the 2016 election.
Both of these systems are a great way to ensure that voters are able to still participate in election regardless of where their polling place is. These are changes that would be far reaching beyond our current election year.
Alabama, though, has long been a state with a history of making voting harder. Not just with its pivotal role in the history of the Jim Crow South, but the state has been a leading force in the making voting harder in the 21st century.
The Shelby County in the Shelby County v Holder Supreme Court decision that overturned portions of the Voting Rights Act refers to Shelby County, Alabama. With the loss of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, in particular, the nine states who were subject to supervision by the federal government have closed over 1,600 polling places according to a report by the Leader Conference on Civil & Human Rights.
In Alabama, we have seen the closure of 72 polling places since Shelby County v Holder. By implementing stringing voting systems, Alabama could finally be on the right side of one voting rights issue.
Recently, President Trump attacked voting by mail and called for Republicans to rally against it tweeting that “for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”
Donald Trump himself voted by absentee ballot in the Florida Republican primary in March. His sudden turnaround against mail-in voting is a shameless attempt at voter suppression. It is an attempt to keep the number of voters who actually vote down so that it works out better for the Republican Party.
This decision is nothing more than an example of Republican putting their electoral interests ahead of the needs of the nation. This is a time to expand the various vote by mail systems that exist across the nation.
