OZARK – Voter fraud is still a real thing in the state of Alabama according to Secretary of State John Merrill.
At a gathering of the Dale County GOP on Monday, Merrill cited the four convictions during his tenure as Alabama Secretary of State as proof but called for more to be done on the local and state levels.
“We’ve had four convictions on voter fraud,” Merrill said to attendees. “We’ve had three elections that have been overturned since I’ve been the secretary. We want some more of that to happen because we have identified people that have broken the law. We just got to have some prosecutors that are willing to step up and help us take it and make it happen at the district attorney level, as well as those that would be assigned by [Alabama Attorney General] Steve Marshall. So, we got to work together to get that done.”
Merrill said he was approached as recently as last week about instances of voter fraud, but added there was a reluctance by those making the allegations to pursue it further.
“I had 12 people come up to me last week in Selma when I spoke last Wednesday night at the Alabama-Tombigbee Regional Commission meeting,” he added. “They came up and said, ‘Look, we know we got voter fraud going on here, but we don’t know what to do.’ We’ll identify some people who can be witnesses, and they’ll say, ‘I don’t want anybody to go to jail.’ What do you want? I mean, if you want to straighten it up, you’ve got to straighten it up.”
“Now I’m not so sure that everybody who has committed voter fraud will go to jail. I do think we need to reevaluate what we’re doing because Sue Bell Cobb – if she ever said one thing that I thought was right when she was chief justice, and this is true – we need to quit putting people in jail that we’re mad at and just put the ones in jail that we’re afraid of, period,” he continued. “And that’s true. But we’ve got to make sure that the ones who have done wrong, that we are mad at, or that we are aggravated at because they’ve broken the law, are dealt with the way they should be. So, we’ve got to give that some attention.”
Following his speech at the event, Merrill told Yellowhammer News that without the willingness of those making voter fraud claims to pursue them further, it was just a conversation.
“What it seems like people like to do is just talk about how, ‘Well, we know this voter fraud is going on,’ and ‘that voter fraud is going on,’” Merrill explained. “Nothing is going on unless it’s been identified and investigated where it is warranted, and an indictment has occurred, and then you had somebody convicted. If that didn’t happen, then no matter what’s going on, it’s just a conversation. It’s just somebody talking. That’s why we’ve got to have people who are committed to making sure that those instances are reported whenever they occur.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and is the editor of Breitbart TV.
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