Tears and Laughter: The Black Belt may not progress forward until it revisits 1985

For years there have been stories and allegations of absentee voter fraud in the Black Belt. I’ve been shown absentee ballot application lists where multiple registered voters – up to 19 – used the same address from small houses where that number of people did not live. The names were many versions of the same names with initials, or just initials.

Area postmasters can see numerous ballots going to certain P.O. boxes.  There is also the custom of workers volunteering or being paid by candidates to collect absentees.

This method is described by supporters as a way of making sure the sick, poor, uneducated, and mentally handicapped get to vote. An honorable way of assuring there is no voter suppression. But it is also illegal, and it has not served the Black Belt well.

It may stem back to the Marion Three case that Jeff Sessions lost in 1985 when he was a United States Attorney in Mobile. It is a case that has haunted his political career since.

The Marion Three were civil rights leader, Albert Turner, his wife Evelyn, and activist, Spencer Hogue. They were indicted for mail fraud, voting more than once, and conspiracy to commit voter fraud. An FBI agent was stationed outside a Perry County post office. He caught the three mailing hundreds of absentee ballots they had collected, some of which were found to have been erased or altered.

Turner explained, ‘Once I learned myself, then it was my job to go out through the area and teach the rest of the counties how it worked.’ Activists were taught to visit homes in Perry, Greene, Lowndes, Dallas and Wilcox counties and help residents fill out ballots. As a result, candidates supported by Turner’s group won elections.

The Marion Three were found not guilty, but maybe not necessarily so much because they weren’t guilty. Perhaps the jury of seven blacks and five whites felt the accusations against Sessions of being racially insensitive were worse than absentee voter fraud charges. They were not about to let Jeff Sessions win…because he was Jeff Sessions and had served and supported during a time when there had been voter suppression against black people. There was no way he was going to win that case, in a Selma courtroom, against those particular three people, be they guilty or not.

It turned into a bit of a reckoning. People celebrated like it was a victory. And for a time maybe it was, especially for those involved who lived outside of the Black Belt. But it seems what also may have happened was that absentee voter fraud was never appropriately addressed. Because they weren’t found guilty, a lot of people took that as a free pass to abuse absentee voting, and still do to this day.

Current Perry County Commissioner, Albert Turner Jr., son of Albert and Evelyn Turner, has requested a meeting with now U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to discuss voter suppression in Perry County. Perry County led the state in absentees in the June 5 primary election. Twenty percent of votes cast were made by absentee. But that evidently wasn’t enough to satisfy Turner. As far as securing a meeting with Sessions…Turner may be out of luck. But until 1985 is revisited, the Black Belt may be too.

This is an opinion column.

Amanda Walker is a blogger and contributor with AL.com, The Thomasville Times, West Alabama Watchman, and Wilcox Progressive Era. Contact her at walkerworld77@msn.com or at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist