Alabama Secretary of State visits Demopolis Rotary
Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill doesn’t mind people calling him at any time. To make sure he can be reached, he gives out his personal cell phone number to everybody, just as he did to the members of the Demopolis Rotary Club on Wednesday.
He makes himself accessible because, “I work for you,” he said. People need to be able to get in touch with him “when it’s important to you, not when it’s convenient for me.”
Merrill, who has held his post since 2015, spoke to Rotarians to let them know about some of the accomplishments of his office.
Giving a bit of history, he said the Secretary of State’s office is the oldest one in the state. It was established in 1818, the year before Alabama became a state.
His office cannot solve all the problems, Merrill continued. “What we are committed to doing is to provide the best services we’re capable of providing with energy and enthusiasm.”
While the Secretary of State’s office has more than 1,000 designated duties, it primarily handles everything related to elections in the state, he said. A lot of controversy – including a lawsuit by the NAACP – has arisen over the state law requiring photo identification for all voters.
Merrill enumerated all the steps his office has taken to enroll voters. They set up registration sites at fairs and festivals in each of the 67 counties at least once a year. They set up in churches, at Wal-Mart and even go to an individual’s home to furnish the needed ID card.
Well known Alabamians celebrities have lent their names to the registration campaign. There is even a method for people to use their smart phones to register as long as they have a valid Alabama driver’s license. “There’s an app for that,” he joked.
With all those ways of making voter registration as accessible as possible, charges of discrimination by his office against certain groups continues.
“People are entitled to their opinion,” said Merrill. “but they’re not entitled their own facts.”
The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice by a federal judge who said, “If every state in the union was doing was Alabama was doing, every state in the union would have photo ID.”
Since Jan. 19, 2015, Merrill’s office has registered 933,861 new voters, swelling the voter rolls to 3,355,129. “That’s unprecedented in the history of the state,” he said.
Alabama broke all voting records in the March 2016 presidential primary, November 2016 presidential election and the December 2017 race between Doug Jones and Roy Moore.
“All we’re trying to do it make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
He also said his office is working to have every county using electronic poll books by 2022 which will cut the wait time for voters by 65-70 percent. Marengo County took part in a trial run of the poll books in several locations, including Demopolis.
“We’re in the 21st Century. We need to start acting like it,” Merrill said.
When it comes to the Business Services aspect of his office. “We need to treat people like we would want to be treated if we were on the other side,” he said.
The office now makes money for the state and no longer receives an appropriation from the legislature.
When he became secretary of state, the office was 7-9 months behind in their business filings. For the last 89 weeks they have been completed the same day they are filed, boasted Merrill. At the same time his staff has been reduced from 49 to 36 employees.
“Our office is not working at the speed of government; we’re moving at the speed of business,” he explained.
Merrill also touched on the concern for the integrity of the elections this year. He said during the 2016 election cycle the state was probed and scanned, but there were no breaches or violations.
“The threat of Russia is real,” he said, but no votes were changed anywhere in the United States.
“Everything that we’re doing is all that we need to be doing,” he promised.