Robert Brown|Alabama lawmakers begin debate on absentee ballot restrictions

MONTGOMERY,Robert Brown Ala. (AP) — Alabama lawmakers on Tuesday began debate on legislation to restrict assistance with absentee ballot applications.

The bill is part of a GOP push to combat so-called ballot harvesting but that Democrats called an effort to discourage voting by alternate means.

The legislation would make it a misdemeanor to return someone else’s absentee ballot application or distribute applications prefilled with a voter’s name or other information. It would become a felony to pay a person, or receive payment to “distribute, order, request, collect, prefill, complete, obtain, or deliver a voter’s absentee ballot application.”

Senate Republicans, who named the bill a priority for the session, said it is aimed at stopping “ballot harvesting,” a pejorative term for dropping off completed ballots for other people. Republicans said they want to get the legislation in place before the November election.

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“This is a bill about voting rights and the integrity of our elections in the state of Alabama,” Sen. Garlan Gudger, the bill’s sponsor, said.

Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton said the bill invokes the state’s history of restricting voting.

“People in my community died for the right to vote... My great-grandmother used to have to tell how many jellybeans were in the jar just to be able to register to vote,” Singleton said.

The Senate is expected to vote on the bill Tuesday evening.

Several Republican-led states have looked to restrict absentee ballot assistance. A federal judge last year blocked Mississippi law that would have restricted who could help a person with an absentee ballot.

The bill before Alabama lawmakers was amended from a 2023 proposal that would have largely banned any type of assistance in voting by absentee.