Top lawmakers in the Alabama Legislature said Thursday that more people voting in the Uniontown municipal election than there are voting age people is a prime example of why the state needs to fight voter fraud.

House Speaker Mike Hubbard, Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh and Senate Majority Leader Jabo Waggoner said the voting pattern in Uniontown, with a population of 1,775 according to the latest census, was suspicious. The town has 2,587 registered voters, according to a report in the Tuscaloosa News.

About 125 percent of the voting age population in the town voted on Tuesday and 45 percent of those who voted did so through an absentee ballot, although the state average for voting absentee is 3 percent to 5 percent, according to the News report.

Waggoner (R), said he doubts the situation was an “isolated mistake” and “serves as a glowing example to any naysayers that voter fraud is real.”

“For months, Democrats and various members of the media have crowed about voter ID laws being cruel and unnecessary because voter fraud is a figment of the imagination,” he said. “This Uniontown case should end that debate, once and for all.”

Secretary of State Beth Chapman, the state’s chief election official, has been vocal about the need to confront voter fraud and said she supports photo voter ID, but said the issue in Uniontown is more about absentee ballots and voter rolls.

“As I have said in the past, no county anywhere in the country votes those percentages to my knowledge and certainly no other county in Alabama does,” Chapman said of the number of absentee votes.

Local and state election officials told the News there could be a number of reasons why those registration numbers are so high, including the possibility that the census numbers indicating the population in the west Alabama town are wrong, that voter registrars have strict guidelines for removing people from the rolls, and that people in the town have post office boxes since there is no door-to-door mail delivery.

Chapman, a Republican, said she has “been jumping up and down” about voter fraud during her six years as secretary of state, has said Perry County where Uniontown is located is the poster child for voter fraud, and has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to become involved so she does not know why people would be surprised.

“I have always supported photo voter ID, but this specific issue is not an issue of photo voter ID,” she said.

Currently, Alabama residents can present one of 19 forms of identification to vote, according to Hubbard’s office, but many of those forms do not have photos. Hubbard argued that those utility bills, bank statements and pay stubs could be easily stolen, borrowed or replicated.

In 2011, the Legislature passed a law that is scheduled to go into effect in 2014 that requires voters to present photo ID to cast a ballot. The law would also provide free photo ID to those who do not already possess it or cannot afford it.

Several Republican Legislatures have passed laws requiring photo identification for voters, which they have said is needed to protect the election process and prevent voter fraud. Democrats have challenged those laws as an attack on poor voters and older voters who are less likely to have photo identification. They have also said Republicans pushed the measures even though they cannot cite problems in their states with voter fraud.

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Editor's Note: We say again, the only justification needed for a strong and undefeatable voter ID law (besides a dedication to protecting the Constitution) is the very real existence of voter registration fraud, of which there are many instances currently.


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