Recently, a coalition of rights groups led by the Alabama State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a lawsuit challenging four provisions of Alabama Senate Bill 1, Act No. 2024-33, informally known as “SB 1”. The legislation, which criminalizes aid in absentee ballot submission, has sparked significant controversy and criticism, creating a palpable divide amongst legal professionals, political representatives, and civil rights organizations.
The lawsuit specifically contests two key provisions, dubbed the Payment and Gift Provisions within the bill. According to the opposition, the Payment Provision makes it illegal for a third party to knowingly receive or make a payment towards distributing, collecting, or completing a voter’s absentee ballot application. The Gift Provision similarly prohibits the giving or receiving of gifts in exchange for assistance with absentee ballot applications. Violations of these provisions could lead to either a Class B or Class C felony charge.
The legal action further challenges the Prefilling and Submission Provisions in SB 1. The critics argue that the Prefilling Restriction legally obstructs anyone from distribution of an absentee ballot application prefilled with any voter’s information. The Submission Provision, on the other hand, makes it illegal for an individual to submit an absentee ballot application on behalf of anyone else unless the applicant requires emergency medical treatment within the five days leading up to the election.
Alabama’s SB 1 was primarily introduced as a countermeasure against “ballot harvesting”, a practice wherein third parties are allowed to collect and submit absentee ballots. This practice, while legal to varying degrees in different states, is only allowed in Alabama if the voter personally returns their ballot.
The Legal Defense Fund has remarked that SB 1 could hamper “non-partisan civil rights, voting rights, and disability rights organizations” from assisting voters with their absentee ballots. This has implications for a wide range of constituents, including senior citizens, incarcerated individuals, low-literacy voters, and those with disabilities who, as per data from the Alabama Secretary of State, cast almost 305,663 of the absentee votes constituting 13.1% of total votes during the 2020 General Election.
The coalition’s lawsuit counters that SB 1 criminalizes constitutionally protected speech and expressions and furthermore criticizes it as incoherently vague in its language. They contend that under how it’s written, simple acts like providing a postage stamp or showing gratitude for assistance in completing or delivering an absentee ballot application could be criminalized.
In the light of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, all new voting procedures must be proven to have no discriminatory intent or effect before they can be enacted. However, Alabama’s absentee ballot procedures have already received an ‘F’ grading from Brookings, putting the state amongst the most rigid in the country. The strict rules laid down in state law spell out only eight situations in which a person could be eligible for an absentee ballot. In addition to meeting one of these circumstances, the applicant must also physically deliver their absentee ballot application or place it in a mailbox.
Following the signing of SB 1 into law, Governor Kay Ivey stated that the goal of the bill was to ensure free and fair elections with no room for fraudulent activities. In contrast, Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton dubbed it a “national Republican issue,” arguing that “ballot harvesting is not an issue in the state.”
As both sides continue to clash, the implications of the lawsuit and its resultant decision could have wide-reaching effects on voting rights and procedures throughout the nation, drawing renewed attention to the heated debate surrounding mail-in voting, and absentee ballots in particular.