On June 21, Alabama voters will decide who will be the Republican nominee for Secretary of State of Alabama.
In the initial primary election, State Auditor Jim Zeigler finished with 42.69% of the vote, while State Rep. Wes Allen (R-Troy) finished with 39.7%, triggering a runoff between the two candidates.
Allen joined WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program” on Friday to discuss how he planned to keep elections in the Yellowhammer State secure.
“The voters of Alabama saw,” he said, “and the ones I’m interfacing with and talking to saw and are asking questions, they’re concerned about election security. They just want to make sure that our elections are safe, secure, transparent, and every vote is going to count and that we’re going to do all we can to protect it.”
The state representative said his job would be to prevent changes to the voting process that could result in less election security.
“First of all, no drop boxes, no mass mailing of ballots like we saw in other states,” he promised, “and so those are the things we hear concerns from people … making sure we will never do, and if I’m Secretary of State, you can rest assured that I’m not going to let that happen.”
Allen explained some of the reasons Alabama set the standard for how to run elections in the country.
“The good thing about Alabama is we have paper ballots,” he explained, “which is good. We keep those for 22 months by law. As long as there’s a federal race on the ballot, they’ll be kept in safe keeping by the sheriff of each county for 22 months, so if anything goes wrong or there’s a very close race or if anyone wants to contest a general election or whatever, it can go back and you can look at the ballots.”
He once again reiterated that he was the candidate with the most experience working in elections in Alabama.
“I think I’m uniquely qualified,” he argued, “being a former probate judge in Pike county for right at 10 years being the chief election’s official for 10 years administering many many elections without error. So I’ve worked with those polls, I’ve appointed poll workers, I’ve trained those poll workers. I’ve worked with the Board of Registrars, I’ve worked with the circuit clerk the sheriff in a team concept to make sure we administer our election laws and have good safe and secure elections.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
