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Witnesses tell hearing Alabama’s SB1 criminalizes routine help for absentee voters
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Summary
Testimony from a Campaign Legal Center counsel and a Greater Birmingham Ministries representative told a hearing that Alabama’s SB1 criminalizes common voter-assistance practices, hampering outreach to incarcerated people, those with disabilities, low-income and rural voters and other groups that rely on help to vote.
Speaker 1, legal counsel for voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, told a public hearing that Alabama’s new SB1 criminalizes routine assistance to absentee-vote applicants and is already impeding nonprofit outreach.
"This year, Alabama passed SB1, which is a law that restricts virtually all forms of assisting voters applying for an absentee ballot by making it a felony, in some cases up to 20 years in prison," Speaker 1 said in their testimony, arguing the law ‘‘punishes and criminalizes organizations and other third parties who are simply seeking to help people apply for an absentee ballot." The witness described their prior work as an Equal Justice Works Fellow in 2020 supporting voter-registration organizations and advocacy for improved polling places.
The witness framed the restriction as a broader threat to voting rights, saying state efforts to limit third-party assistance "are the new front in the battle to securing a true multiracial democracy in this country." They cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder as background that changed federal protections for jurisdictions with histories of discrimination.
Representatives speaking for Greater Birmingham Ministries described the organization’s long-running outreach, including work in state prisons and assistance to people with prior felony convictions. "GBM was founded on the mission of serving people, building community, and pursuing justice," Speaker 2 said, adding that "Alabama is one of six states that actually allows people to vote while incarcerated" and that SB1 "has been really hindering our ability to work with people who have trouble accessing the ballot box."
Testifiers emphasized which groups are most affected if assistance is criminalized: low-income voters, disabled voters, rural voters and voters of color. "By preventing that assistance, you're actually broadly impacting how entire slots of people are able to exercise their rights," Speaker 1 said.
Witnesses also stressed the need for legal support for community organizations doing voter-assistance work. One speaker said organizations "could not do the work that we do without knowing that we had legal backup to advise us," framing litigation and counsel as essential to continue outreach under the new legal risks.
The testimony concluded with an appeal to civil-rights history and moral urgency: Speaker 1 invoked Martin Luther King and said the arc of history bends toward justice, framing the fight over assistance as part of that arc. The hearing is the venue for these challenges to SB1 and the witnesses said they were presenting arguments opposing the statute.
No formal vote or action on SB1 is recorded in the provided transcript.
