The Alabama Republican Party will tell you what you want. And you’ll like it.
Forget all of that nonsense about voting. And no more of this stuff about following rules and regulations when replacing people on boards or commissions or at regulatory agencies. And really, y’all, stop it with all of this “it’s my right to vote” garbage.
ALGOP will handle this stuff. Trust them.
I mean, did you really want to vote for the people who regulate your utility bills? Do you really care about who’s on the state’s Archives and History Board? Did you really want to be able to cast a vote for a lottery or gambling? Do you want to be able to vote more easily and without paying a poll tax?
All of that stuff seems like a lot of work, especially when you’ve got the super-well-functioning Alabama Republican Party just sitting there waiting to do all of this for you. That is, if they’re finished leaking audio recordings of each other and bickering like school kids.
All joking aside, what in the ever-lovin’ world is happening right now?
I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed a more blatant or troubling power grab—one meant to secure power within a select group of people by taking it directly away from the voters—than what’s taking place with ALGOP, and, really, with the Republican Party at the national level.
In the state, there have been bills to stop voting on the Public Service Commission members, to allow immediate removals of board members without cause and to allow appointing authorities (the governor, speaker, president pro tem, etc.) to remove and replace appointed board and commission members without cause and without following any protocols.
That is on top of the SAVE Act, which is being pushed nationally and supported by Alabama Republicans, which would essentially impose a poll tax on every American citizen in order to vote, and would make it more difficult for the elderly, the poor and married women to cast a ballot.
I suppose none of this is new. Republicans in Alabama have been trying desperately for years to weasel their way into more power by steadily stealing it from voters—through gerrymandering, through ridiculous crossover primary voting rules, through absurd voting laws that discourage voting while doing zilch to stop fraud and through diminishing home rule and centralizing all decision making and power in Montgomery.
It’s why you can only cast a ballot on one day in every election, while states all around us practice early voting. It’s why a single congressional rep is representing a family in Fort Payne and one Sulligent, some 200 miles apart, and all the people in between, all the way across the state. It’s why you can go to jail now for merely assisting a person with filling out an absentee ballot application (not even the actual ballot). And it’s why we need a vote in the legislature to pass a leash law in Athens.
Power, baby.
The Republicans have it and they want desperately to keep it. And they know there’s only one group who can realistically take it from them—voters.
That’s why they don’t want you voting. That’s why they want to require a passport and a pint of blood in order to register to vote. Because tossing up roadblocks discourages voting and drives down voter turnout. And we all know the rule—the higher the turnout, the better Democratic candidates do in elections.
It’s a weird thing, really. You’d think that the answer would be altering policies to meet voters’ demands and wishes, not simply figuring out a way to discourage certain groups from voting.
That’s what the SAVE Act does—discourages voting. That’s all it’s good for. They’ve painted it as an “election security” bill, but that’s absolute BS. We don’t have a problem with voter fraud in this country—not in any form. So, there’s no realistic need for requiring a STAR ID or a passport for registration, and there’s absolutely no reason to require limited government IDs at polling places.
That is, there’s no reason unless the goal is less about security and more discouragement.
In the meantime, the other side is doing all it can to encourage more people to vote, to inject more voices into this American experiment and to allow you more say so in everything.
Democrats in Alabama have already proposed a couple of lottery and gambling bills that would allow voters to finally have a say in legalizing both. They’ve proposed legislation that would make it easier for the disabled and elderly to cast ballots. They’ve fought like hell against some of the ridiculously useless voter ID restrictions.
And then, there is the best bill of the 2026 legislative session—a bill, House Bill 14, sponsored by Representative Marilyn Lands that creates an avenue in Alabama for citizens to file ballot initiatives. No more waiting on some lawmaker to move the lobbyists out of his office to get to the little guys. Under Lands’ bill, they could be heard through this process, which includes an avenue to actually get citizen-created legislation on the ballot without a lawmaker sponsoring it.
It’s weird, you know.
Republicans claim that this state is dominated by voters who believe in their style of governance. They hold supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature. They hold every statewide office. And yet, they’re out here squashing votes and killing elections.
Wonder what they’re afraid of?
