In a huge victory for Alabama voters, the state’s unfair and illegal voter purge program has been halted. The eleventh-hour voter purge program targeted naturalized citizens, especially Black and brown voters, and put their freedom to vote in the 2024 election into jeopardy.
Now that a federal judge has put the voter purge program on pause, more voters will be able to make their voices heard this November.
Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is representing four Alabama voters, the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, the League of Women Voters of Alabama, and the Alabama Conference of the NAACP in the lawsuit challenging the voter purge program. CLC filed the lawsuit in partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Fair Elections Center, and local counsel Mitch McGuire.
In August, just months before voters are set to head to the ballot box to cast their votes in the 2024 election, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen directed Alabama’s Boards of Registrars to immediately inactivate and ultimately remove voters from the rolls if they ever had an immigration-related “identification number” issued by the federal government.
All naturalized citizens at one point had one of these numbers before becoming citizens. Secretary Allen’s purge program clearly included, and targeted, naturalized citizens. In fact, Secretary Allen admitted that his program almost certainly swept in naturalized citizens.
Secretary Allen’s purge program has illegally targeted both naturalized Alabamians and, because Secretary Allen’s data was faulty, U.S.-born citizens. This purge program was implemented despite the fact that federal law bans any systematic voter removal activity within 90 days of a federal election.
Secretary Allen expressly admitted the virtual certainty that many, if not all, of the people he initially identified included naturalized citizens, but made no effort to keep Americans from being removed from the active voter rolls.
In addition to targeting eligible voters, Secretary Allen’s voter purge program has intimidated naturalized U.S. citizens in Alabama who fear of being wrongly criminally investigated and prosecuted.
To make matters worse, Secretary Allen referred everyone on his purge list for criminal investigation by the Alabama attorney general, including naturalized citizens.
Between the criminal referrals, the purge program itself, and inflammatory rhetoric, Secretary Allen’s purge program is sure to intimidate many naturalized U.S. citizens and Alabama residents who are eligible to vote. No U.S. citizen should be afraid to vote. Again, all Americans have the freedom to vote — no matter where they were born.
Naturalized citizens are immigrants who have worked hard to become American citizens and have the same freedom to vote as all other Americans. The court's decision helps protect Alabama citizens’ freedom to register and vote without concerns about government interference or intimidation.