In a lawsuit filed by multiple advocacy groups, it is claimed that the state of Alabama’s effort to purge its voter list in advance of November’s presidential election unfairly targeted four people in Alabama.
The lawsuit alleges that the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a law that promotes voting rights and facilitates voter registration, is violated by State Secretary Wes Allen’s purge program, which aims to remove over 3,000 voters in the state who had previously received noncitizen identification numbers from the Department of Homeland Security.
“The Purge Program, based solely on Secretary Allen’s belief that they were once issued a noncitizen identification number—even if they have since become naturalized citizens and lawfully registered to vote—inactivates and constructively removes thousands of Alabamans from the active voter rolls shortly before the November 2024 general election and forces them to re-register in order to vote and be registered to vote,” the advocacy groups wrote in their lawsuit.
As of Saturday, according to Allen’s office’s director of communications, the office had not received a lawsuit. “Generally speaking, the office does not comment on ongoing litigation where the secretary is a named defendant,” the speaker continued.
The lawsuit further claims that some qualified voters on the purge list had to re-register to vote because they were incorrectly added to the list based on fraudulent information.
“No citizen of the United States should be denied the right to vote, and every American, regardless of birthplace, is entitled to this freedom. Paul Smith, senior vice president of Campaign Legal Center, one of the advocacy groups, said, “Alabama is shamefully intimidating naturalized citizens and illegally purging qualified Americans from voter rolls, instead of protecting Americans’ freedom to vote in the November election.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama was among the advocacy groups who wrote to Allen last month to express their disapproval of the purge program and to request its termination.
“We further demand that Alabama produce program-related documents in accordance with the NVRA, and we demand that your office and all other implementing state and local entities in Alabama immediately cease this program,” they wrote.