MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - In the Alabama secretary of state’s race, a political newcomer who says the state needs a voting rights champion is taking on a Republican incumbent who touts his record on both voter registration and cleaning up voter rolls.
Republican Secretary of State John Merrill faces a challenge from Democratic nominee Heather Milam as he seeks a second term.
Merrill, 54, is stressing his record in office that he says includes accessibility to constituents, record voter registration, purging of rolls and continuing to implement and defend the state’s voter ID law. Milam said she supports measures to make it easier to vote such as automatic voter registration and early voting.
“I think it’s time we had a voting rights champion in the office of secretary of state,” Milam, 39, said.
While Alabama legislators would have to approve early voting, Milam said she believes the idea is popular among voters in both parties.
“Here in Alabama we condense early voting to a 12-hour window on a workday. We don’t make it easy to vote. And the current secretary of state has supported and praised continuous barriers put into place to make it more difficult to vote,” Milam said.
Milam comes from a background in publishing and management, including helping to found a Weld, a free community newspaper in Birmingham. As a Democrat running against an incumbent in a GOP-dominated state, she acknowledges she is an underdog, but said she believes voters are ready for a change.
Merrill was elected secretary of state in 2014 after serving in the Alabama House of Representatives where he co-sponsored the state’s voter ID law that requires people to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls.
“We’re making it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” said Merrill.
“We’ve registered more voters than any other time in the history of our state. Our voter role maintenance is the best it’s ever been,” Merrill said.
Merrill said there are now 3.4 million registered voters in the state. He said more than a million of those have registered since he took office in 2015. At the same time, Merrill said 658,000 voters have been purged from the rolls.
Merrill said he doesn’t favor early voting because of the cost. However, he would like to see the state allow absentee voting without an excuse. Currently, to vote absentee, people must sign a form attesting they are ill, will be out of town or work a shift of 10 hours or more.
Merrill said his office is taking steps to help people vote, including sending a mobile unit around the state to make free voter IDs. Last year, Merrill supported legislation to define for the first time which felony convictions would strip a person of their voting rights, ending differences in interpretation from county to county.
Voting advocacy groups said the legislative change was a step in the right direction but did not end the practice they considered discriminatory.
Merrill has come under some criticism at times from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and others.
The Brennan Center sent Merrill a letter in July expressing concerns that the state was not giving voters required notice before removing them if an interstate database flagged them as being registered in another state.
Other groups contended the state should do more to advertise the change in the felon voting law.
Merrill said the state is following the law, and dismissed the criticism as from groups with political agendas.
A group of Twitter users blocked by Merrill sued him in September arguing he is blocking their right to free speech in the “modern day town square.” Merrill responded that that it is his personal Twitter account but his cellphone number is on his office business card and he regularly gives it out in speeches.
“Don’t say that I’m not accessible because that’s a joke. There’s nobody more accessible than me,” Merrill said.
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