What’s Wrong with Alabama?

I was watching one of the Sunday morning news shows and caught a portion of an interview with Alabama Attorney General Troy King. He was talking about a potential voter fraud investigation in the western portion of his state, which seems to tie into this report from Alabama.com from this week. There were numerous allegations, including reports of absentee voter ballots being sold for $40 each.

ALABAMA ATTORNEY General Troy King and U.S. Justice Department officials shouldn’t be fighting over who gets to investigate possible election fraud in Perry County.

There’s enough evidence of voting irregularities in that west Alabama county to keep state and federal investigators busy getting to the bottom of it.

Mr. King also thinks something may be rotten in the voting in Bullock, Jackson and Lowndes counties. He should go all-out in determining whether, as one anti-fraud activist put it, a “crime against democracy” occurred in those jurisdictions.

Mr King spoke of one of his investigators being arrested for “harassment” in Perry County when they went to collect handwriting samples and conduct interviews. What is so unusual in Perry County to warrant all of this attention? Apparently it’s the incredibly (some might say unbelievably) patriotic and civic minded attitude of the county’s residents.

Perry County tends to have remarkably high turnouts and an equally remarkable number of absentee voters. Consider the June 3 primary, which attracted about 16 percent of the state’s registered voters to the polls. In Perry County, more than 50 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots in the primary election.

A turnout that high is enough to raise eyebrows, but the most surprising thing about the primary vote totals was the number of Perry County residents who voted absentee. In a county with a population of about 11,000, 1,114 absentee votes were recorded. That’s about a fourth of the total turnout.

I went to Election Atlas to take a peek at the 2006 gubernatorial election results in the Yellowhammer State. You’ll want to follow the link and poke around, because some of these results are sure to raise eyebrows. Little old Perry County had an estimated population of roughly 11,000 and turned out 4,270 voters in an off year. Impressive! And nearly a quarter of them were absentee ballots. (Must be hard to get time off from the farm to head down to the polling places.) For a comparison, take a look at their neighbors in Bibb County. Demographically, along lines of race, income, religion, etc. the two seem nearly identical. Bibb is a bit larger, though, with an estimated population of nearly 22,500 and they only managed to turn out 5,550 voters. (Under four percent were absentee ballots. They probably have better cars there I’m guessing.)

Of course, it wasn’t just the number of voters which was notable, but also how they voted. In Bibb County it looked like a hard fought, somewhat close race for such a conservative area. Republican Bob Riley managed a win by a margin of 58% to 39%. It was a respectable victory, but hardly outside of the margins of what you would expect. But in tiny Perry County, the massive number of civic minded citizens delivered a 70% to 29% victory for Democrat Lucy Baxley. 70%? Really? And for the Democrat? I’m not sure if we could get 70% of America to agree that strangling kittens was “bad.”

Of course, none of this provides rock solid proof of wrongdoing without more evidence. I suppose it’s theoretically possible that Perry County is just a hugely politically active bastion of Democratic support. But let’s wish the A.G. the best of luck in his work. It certainly sounds like he’s got plenty of it in front of him.

Additional material from the Demopolis Times.

e-mail the author: jazzshaw@gmail.com