A voting ballot. A federal judge Friday denied a state motion to delay a ruling that limited the scope of a new Alabama state law criminalizing some forms of absentee ballot assistance. (Getty Images)
A federal judge Friday rejected a state request to delay a ruling limiting the scope of a new state law criminalizing some forms of assistance with absentee ballots.
In a 10-page filing, U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor wrote that his Sept. 24 ruling — applied to the ability of blind, disabled and illiterate voters to choose people to assist them with applying for absentee voting — reflected the federal Voting Rights Act and took issue with the Alabama attorney general’s office’s characterization of his decision.
“In reading Defendant’s Motion, one would think the court has enjoined Defendant from enforcing the entirety of Alabama Senate Bill 1 (‘SB 1’),” he wrote. “To the contrary, the court entered a limited injunction, which prohibits enforcement of SB 1 only to the extent that law is preempted by Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act (‘VRA’). Particularly in light of the tone of Defendant’s Motion, it is appropriate to put the court’s limited injunction into perspective.”
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A message was left with the Attorney General’s office Monday morning. The Attorney General’s office wrote that the injunction limited their ability to limit fraud.
In the state’s brief, the state attorneys had written the court “should” have held an evidentiary hearing and that the court had accepted a construction of facts without an evidentiary hearing.
“Credibility issues and disputes of material fact abound,” they wrote.
Proctor wrote that the issue of the evidentiary hearing was a purely legal question, despite attempts by the office to argue otherwise.
“Despite Defendant’s attempt to manufacture disputes of fact, the issue of whether (Section) 208 preempts SB 1 involves a ‘pure legal question,’ which plainly does not require an evidentiary hearing to resolve it,” he wrote.
SB1, sponsored by Sen. Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, made it a Class C felony – punishable by up to 10 years in prison – for a person to knowingly receive payment for “distributing, ordering, requesting, collecting, completing, prefilling, obtaining or delivering” an absentee ballot application. The law makes it a Class B felony –punishable by up to 20 years in prison – if a person knowingly pays or provides a gift to a “third party to distribute, order, request, collect, prefill, complete, obtain or deliver.”
Proctor previously put in place a preliminary injunction to a portion of the law impacting voters who are blind, disabled or unable to read or write. He wrote that the law would likely burden those voters covered by Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows those voters to have an assistor of their choosing.
The state plans to appeal the ruling to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
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