John Merrill: Efforts to ‘make political hay’ led to withdrawal of no-excuse absentee voting push

Earlier this year, Secretary of State John Merrill endorsed proposed legislation that would allow for no-excuse absentee voting, only to back away from that endorsement shortly thereafter.

Merrill, during his first “Capitol Journal” appearance since being caught up in controversy over revelations of an extramarital affair, revisited the no-excuse absentee voting push.

He told Alabama Public Television host Don Dailey the effort was based on successes during the 2020 election cycle with absentee voting. However, he said opposition led by those who he deemed were trying to “make political hay” led to his decision not to pursue a proposal on no-excuse absentee brought by State Rep. Laura Hall (R-Huntsville).

“[W]hat we wanted to do, Don, was we wanted to have a conversation in the legislature about whether or not Alabamians wanted to advance this as a concept at this point in time,” he said. “Grace Newcombe, who is my legislative liaison, did a tremendous job presenting this bill to the committee on constitution, campaigns and elections to make it clear that the present practice that is in place is not as solid and strong as it should be. And because we just had 331,000 applications and 305,000 people successfully vote absentee in the 2020 cycle, we thought it was time to have the discussion because everybody used the same excuse when they went to vote in 2020.”

“But it became very clear, very quickly there were a number of legislators and a number of other elected officials and just some general concern, community folks that were not supportive of this because they wanted to make political hay and say that Alabama is trying to lessen the strength of our election laws, which was not the case at all,” Merrill continued. “But we talked to [State Rep.] Laura Hall, who was the legislator that carried it for us — we added three items to that bill to make sure it was as effective as it could possibly be, including but not limited to reducing the amount of time that available to apply for an absentee ballot by mail and removing the long-outdated postmark component that was there, as well as allowing the absentee election manager to open the absentee ballots beginning at 7 am on Election Day.”

“When we realized this was going to be a political conversation instead of constitutional or legislative conversation, we removed our support of that legislation, and we asked [State Rep.] Alan Baker to carry that bill for us,” he added. “[Senator] Garlan Gudger carried that bill for us with those three components. They passed it. It was enacted. It will be in place in the ’22 cycle.”

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.