State Auditor Andrew Sorrell, candidate for Alabama Secretary of State in 2026, is disappointed that the Legislature was unable to pass an election audit bill during the 2025 session.
State Rep. Debbie Wood (R-Valley) introduced a bill that would have required the judge of probate of each county to conduct a post-election audit after every county and statewide general election to determine the accuracy of the originally reported results of the election.
The legislation passed the House, but didn’t make it through the Senate.
Sorrell said ensuring election integrity will be one of his main priorities if he’s elected as Secretary of State in 2026, but he’s hoping lawmakers in Montgomery will help him in that effort.
“Honestly, I thought the bill should have been a little bit stronger, but I was supportive of the bill,” Sorrell said Friday on WVNN. “We’re the only state in America that does not audit our elections. That bill has passed the Alabama House of Representatives three years in a row and has died in the Senate all three years now.”
“It came to the floor, and a senator came up and made a motion to carry the bill over to the call of the chair, which effectively killed it,” he added, “because I was the last day of session this year. It got on the calendar with a couple legislative days left, didn’t receive a vote, and then never got back on the calendar again. That bill died.”
Sorrell believes there’s no reason a bill like this shouldn’t pass in Alabama.
“It’s going to be my number one issue,” he explained. “I mean, I hope the legislature passes it next year before my hopeful election to Secretary of State, but if they don’t, that’s going to be my number one issue to work on when I win Secretary of State.”
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He also thinks watermarking ballots is another step Alabama can take to secure elections.
“I mean, we can’t tell the difference between a fake ballot and a real one right now by looking at it,” he said. “And by the way, our machines can’t either, because my friend Angela shepherd in Lee County photocopied her absentee ballot and took it to a Lee County Public ballot testing in 2022, ran the copied ballots through the machine at the public ballot testing and the ballot counter tabulator counted every single one of them. That is such a problem, and it’s very easy to solve. Georgia has done it. They watermark their ballots in Georgia. Tennessee watermarks their absentee ballots to prevent photocopying of absentee ballots, and we don’t do it.”
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 X @Yaffee
