Alabama Senate Majority Leader Kay Ivey’s Two Freedom-Promoting Proposed Senate Bills to Eliminate Payed Help with Absentee Ballot Applications

The Alabama legislature gave final approval to a bill that would ban paid help with ballot applications, and another that would restrict diversity at universities and state agencies.

Republicans had named the bills as priorities for the legislative session. The Senate agreed to the changes made by the House of Representatives. The two bills now go to Gov. Kay Ivey for her signature.

The absentee voting bill would make it a misdemeanor to distribute a pre-filled absentee ballot application to a voter or return another voter’s completed application. If you gave or received a payment for distributing, ordering, requesting, collecting, completing, pre filling, obtaining or delivering a voter’s Absentee Ballot application it would be a felony.

“Ballot harvesting” is a term for the collection of multipleAbsentee Ballots in order to combat voter fraud. Democrats argued that there is no proof that ballot harvesting exists and called it an attempt to suppress voting by absentee ballot.

“Any person can still get anyone’s help with applications, but no part of that application can be pre-filled. “That’s the only thing that’s going on.” Republican Senator Garlan Gudger was the bill’s sponsor. There is a lot of pressure when people want to vote in a certain way. You can’t do that. “You have to not have it,” he said.

“It’s just another voter suppression. It’s just a means of suppressing certain people from having the ability and right to access to the free flowing of the vote,” Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton said.

Jerome Dees, Alabama policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, said in a statement that the “cruel legislation aims to criminalize the charitable acts of good Samaritans across the state, whether from neighbors, church members, nursing home staffers, or prison chaplains.”

Protests to Anti-DeI: A State Legislature Look at a Bill that Limits “Hidden” Civil Liberation Laws

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, 80 bills have been introduced against DEI in the last eight years. Measures have been signed into law in eight states.

Black Democrats said that Republicans were trying to roll back affirmative action programs that welcomed and encouraged diversity because they were trying to guard against programs that deepened divisions.

There are provisions that deal with situations in the classroom. The bill says that it wouldn’t prevent the teacher or contractor from speaking to the people that are asking the questions.

The legislation says that colleges and universities have to make sure that every single restroom is available for individuals based on their sex at birth. It is unclear how the requirement would be enforced.

The bill was signed by the governor one day after the state legislature gave final approval. It will take effect on October 1. College students who oppose the bill have organized protests against it, including a large rally at the State House earlier this month, member station WBHM reports.

Critics of such bills say they’re motivated more by politics than by educational aspirations; they also say efforts to ban DEI are more likely to undermine, rather than protect, free speech protections.

The legislation does not specifically mention the troubling record of Alabama and the U.S. on race, such as the dehumanizing enslavement of Black people and longstanding attempts to disenfranchise Black voters. The way schools teach students about those topics has been a political lightning rod in recent years, as opponents took aim at critical race theory.

The bill also rejects the idea that any “individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” — a position that runs counter to what social scientists have concluded in recent decades.

The legislation states that the idea of people in one demographic group being responsible for actions in the past by other members of that group is divisive.

The bill’s longest section is devoted to laying out its limits — and some of the language seems geared toward preventing it from being overturned by legal challenges.

“This is a Fourteenth Amendment violation. It is clearly vague. Clearly unconstitutional,” he said, according to WBHM. “We’re putting a prior restraint on my thoughts of speech,” he said, condemning what he said was a First Amendment violation.

The H.R.L.B.S. bill authorizes accreditation requirements in higher education fields and subject matter fields, and does not require such a requirement for accreditation

In the collection of demographic information and subject matter, the bill allows colleges that need to fulfill accreditation standards or requirements to do so.