Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said he disagrees with recent comments by former Sen. Doug Jones about it being “hard to vote” in his state.
Jones (D-Birmingham) made the comments last week during a symposium in Birmingham led by U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Birmingham).
Allen responded to the allegation Friday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program.”
“I read that and I shook my head,” Allen said, “because, number one, our system is not broken, our election system in Alabama. The probate judges, the circuit clerks, the sheriffs, the board of registrars, the local officials do a very fine job of running the elections at the local level.”
Allen said he’s never had anyone tell him they were unable to vote because of the election procedures.
“No,” he said, “even as a probate judge, I was a probate judge in Pike County, as a chief election official in Pike County, I never had that.”
He also said his goal is to keep elections secure and wants to avoid some of the confusion in other states during the 2020 election.
“We’ve got a great system,” he said. “We’re going to know at the end of the night, unless it’s just an extremely close election, who wins and loses our elections. And I think that’s a great point about our elections systems in Alabama.
“We’re going to know at the end of the night because we have fine people running our elections and we have good laws in place to make sure we protect our elections and the security of our elections.”
Allen said he supports the law by State Rep. Jamie Kiel (R-Russellville) that would make any kind of ballot harvesting illegal in the state.
“We’ve just got to make sure that ballot harvesting and all that entails is not able to be done in Alabama,” he said. “The only thing that needs to be harvested in Alabama is our crops and our trees, not ballots.
“We’re very supportive of that bill to make sure our absentee process is strong.”
Allen reiterated that it’s not difficult to vote in the Yellowhammer State.
“We do not make it hard to vote in Alabama,” he said. “We have a good system and we want to keep that system in place.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
