Judge limits scope of lawsuit challenging Alabama restrictions on help absentee ballot applications

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge has sided with the state of Alabama in narrowing the scope of a lawsuit challenging a new law that criminalizes some ways of helping other people to apply for an absentee ballot.

Chief U.S. District Judge David Proctor ruled Wednesday that civic groups can pursue just one of their claims: that the law’s ban on gifts or payment for application assistance violates the Voting Rights Act’s assurances that blind, disabled or low-literacy voters can get help from a person of their choice. The judge granted the state’s request to dismiss the other claims raised in the lawsuit.

Alabama is one of several Republican-led states imposing new limits on voter assistance. State Republicans said they’re needed to combat voter fraud. The federal lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, the Legal Defense Fund and the Campaign Legal Center says it “turns civic and neighborly voter engagement into a serious crime.”

The new law, originally known as Senate Bill 1, makes it illegal to distribute an absentee ballot application that is prefilled with information such as the voter’s name, or to return another person’s absentee ballot application. And it created a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, to give or receive a payment or a gift “for distributing, ordering, requesting, collecting, completing, prefilling, obtaining, or delivering a voter’s absentee ballot application.”

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