The Department of Justice under the Biden-Harris administration recently sued Alabama and its top election official because the state took thousands of noncitizens off its voting rolls. The DOJ said that the move was illegal because it happened too close to Election Day.
Wes Allen became Alabama’s secretary of state in January 2023 and recently got rid of 3,251 people who were registered to vote from the state’s rolls. The Department of Homeland Security had already given the noncitizens registration cards. People who are not citizens can use the ID numbers to get driver’s IDs and show proof that they live in the country.
“It is my moral job to make sure that only citizens of the United States can vote in our elections.”
Allen says he will do everything he can to make sure Alabama has the “cleanest and most accurate” voting rolls in the country.
Allen said, “I have made it clear that I will not allow noncitizens to vote in our elections. In fact, I went so far as to speak before a US Senate Committee about how important this issue is. As we looked through the current voting file, we tried to figure out who on that list has been given a noncitizen identification number.”
The administration sued the state and Allen for supposedly breaking the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which says that all changes to registration lists must be made 90 days before federal elections. This happened after Allen told the state to take the noncitizens off the rolls. The Department of Justice says Allen’s changes happened 84 days before the election in November.
The Civil Rights Division’s Assistant Attorney General, Kristen Clarke, said, “The right to vote is one of the most important rights in our society.”
“As Election Day gets closer, Alabama needs to fix the confusion voters are feeling because of the list maintenance letters it sent without following federal law,” Clarke said. “Governments all over the country should pay attention to the National Voter Registration Act’s unequivocal limits on efforts to keep voter lists up to date that happen within 90 days of an election. Federal law has a “Quiet Period Provision” that keeps qualified voters from being taken off the rolls during last-minute, error-prone efforts.
