Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is representing two Alabama voters with past felony convictions in a lawsuit challenging a new law that could deprive many Alabamians of their freedom to vote in the 2024 election.
The bill, H.B. 100, states that it will go into effect on October 1, 2024, just over a month before the election. The law effectively adds over 120 felonies to Alabama’s so-called list of “crimes of moral turpitude,” which take away a person’s right to vote.
Changing the rules about who can vote just one month before the November election will create a lot of confusion for voters and election officials, alike.
To make matters worse, absentee voting in Alabama begins on September 11, 2024 — before H.B. 100 goes into effect. That means that some Alabamians could cast their ballots as eligible voters but then lose their freedom to vote before their ballot is counted.
At the core of Alabama’s felony disenfranchisement scheme are “felonies involving moral turpitude.” This vague term was originally adopted in the 1901 Alabama Constitution to “establish white supremacy in this State,” and was a method of keeping Black people from voting without overtly breaking federal law.
Alabama was then able to arbitrarily and unequally deny people their freedom to vote based on vague, undefined language.
Alabamians had long been pushing the state to clarify which felony convictions take away the right to vote. In 2017, after decades of hard work by local advocates and a lawsuit filed by CLC on behalf of Greater Birmingham Ministries, the Legislature finally passed a law defining which convictions take away the freedom to vote.
Now, Alabama seeks to disenfranchise thousands more of its citizens just over a month before the 2024 general election and while early voting is already underway.
CLC’s lawsuit, filed in partnership with Alabama attorney J. Mitch McGuire, seeks to block this law from going into effect so currently eligible Alabama voters with felony convictions can make their voice heard this November.
CLC’s Restore Your Vote tool is a helpful resource to help people with past felony convictions understand their voting rights. Learn more here.