Testimony of Jenny Carroll, May 13, 2019

Background: In 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Elections, held hearings regarding the administration of elections in Alabama. Jenny Carroll, a professor of Law at University of Alabama, testified about the impact of recent changes to voting laws in the state. In this section of her testimony, Carroll mentioned false claims of voter fraud. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of states requiring voters to show a state-issued identification grew from thirteen to thirty-four, and many states toughened existing voter ID laws. This increase occurred despite the rarity of voter impersonation. Although seemingly neutral, voter ID laws disproportionately affect African American and Latinx voters, as well as elderly and low-income individuals.

Since the Shelby County decision, Alabama has passed and implemented a variety of regulations on voting. While these regulations are facially neutral, they raise real concerns about the opportunity of enfranchisement among the very population that the Voting Rights Act was designed to protect.

The days of a sheriff standing in the doorway of the polling place may be a thing of the past, but current voting regulations may produce the same effect on minority and poor populations in our State. The method may be softer and more subtle, but the results are exactly the same.

Now, today, I want to provide a general overview of impediments to voting in Alabama. . . . From voter identification laws to curtailed polling places, to limited polling hours, to lack of early voting, to no no-excuse absentee balloting, Alabama election laws disproportionately affect the voters in our State even as they claim to improve election integrity.

Such laws create barriers to voting in their reliance either on a one-size-fits-all notion of Alabama voters, in which every citizen interested in casting a ballot has access to the required identification and documentation, transportation, and the resources necessary to realize the right to vote, or they rely on the notion that small impediments to voting are tolerable.

Such perceptions and their harms are not justified by purported needs to ensure voter integrity. In fact, testimony received at the February 22nd hearing before the State Advisory Committee revealed that this was an illusory risk, that, in fact, after the passage--or prior to the passage, rather, of the voter ID law, there was no evidence of individual voter fraud in the State.

Further, the State's position, that until individual voters appear and complain that they cannot register, the government will maintain their position that all who want to register can. This not only mischaracterizes the true threat to Alabama's elections, but it adopts a position of willful blindness to the impact of such neutral laws on the very people these laws should work hardest to protect.

Finally, widespread confusion over election law and voter requirements and inconsistent implementation of laws across and within counties exacerbates this impact.

Source: Voting Rights And Election Administration in Alabama, Hearing Before the Subcommittee On Elections, Committee On House Administration, U.S. House of Representatives, May 13, 2019.