Eagle Forum Conference: Elections, Gambling, Abortion Pills, More

Eagle Forum of Alabama hosted their annual Policy Conference Friday, December 5th at the First Baptist Church in Birmingham. The Conference has become a significant event for the conservative group, both to review the past year and to prepare for the legislative session beginning in January.

Eagle Forum President  Becky Gerritson opened the meeting by briefly discussing the group’s history, and acknowledged Eunie Smith, who founded Eagle Forum of Alabama. Gerritson reminded the group that Eagle Forum has three key missions: “we educate, we build grassroots networks, and we advocate for policies that support families.”

Susan Chapman of Madison presented the case for hand counting, saying “transparency is almost nonexistent when it comes to our voting machines. The complexity keeps our citizens from being involved—they have to accept that our elections are fine, but they are not.” Chapman pointed out that most States have either free or very low-cost voter rolls, but Alabama is by far the most expensive at $38,000, which is a significant barrier to examining and cleaning our voter rolls.

Chapman said that “hand counting is easy, effective and transparent,” hinting at the presentations to come.

Bob Retsch, also from Madison, gave a presentation on the use of voting machines in Madison’s elections, pointing out the extreme lack of transparency and potential points of failure in the security of the votes. “There are fourteen opportunities for voter fraud in that process,” according to Retsch. He described five areas of concern—voter registration, systems that are open to the Internet, hardware and software issues, the data chain of custody, and command and control of the entire process.

America is facing a “coming storm” in the 2026 midterms, saying that “if President Trump declares an emergency (because of compromised electronic voting machines) is Alabama prepared? NO.”

He concluded by pointing out that hand counting ballots would be significantly cheaper than the machines currently in use, and could potentially save Alabama some $78 million in a four-year cycle.

Suzanne Kohler spoke about “filling in the gaps,” and emphasized that most voting machines are made by subsidiaries of companies which make gambling machines, which she called “very concerning.”

Dr. Douglas G. Frank, “the Johnny Appleseed of Election Reform,” gave a lengthy presentation on his investigations in 48 States, uncovering the underlying algorithms that have corrupted past elections. He pointed out that he first proved our elections were being manipulated in December of 2020, and has since worked full-time in this area with Mike Lindell and others.

Dr. Frank showed data from Shelby County and shared that he had spoken with former Secretary of State John Merrill about how he could predict voter registration in every county—proof that the rolls were being manipulated. He described fraudulent registrations as a “line of credit” that bad actors could draw on to manipulate election results. He offered hand counting of ballots—as many countries do—as an effective solution to many of the problems he had found in our elections.

After lunch, Gerritson then turned the podium over to Brady Johnson of the Student Eagles, who spoke about how the group allows students from middle school through college to become active in learning about and supporting conservative causes. “Anybody can have an impact,” Johnson said. “You can start making a difference right now.”

The legislative portion of the conference began with a session on sex ed in schools. Beth Pruitt, the scheduled presenter, was unable to attend but Jason Mann spoke in her stead. He lauded Senator Shay Shelnutt’s SB3, the Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Bill, which has been pre-filed for the upcoming session.

Mann pointed out that 50% of sexually transmitted diseases in Alabama are in the 15/24 age group. He further states that sexual risk avoidance teaches not just abstinence but positive coping and pressure-resisting skills, as well as encouraging positive life choices. He described it as a “primary prevention holistic program” which is showing positive results in those schools which have implemented it.

Caitlin Conners spoke on mail-order abortion pills, saying that “over 60% of abortions nationwide are now down by pill.” As a consequence of Biden-era policies introduced during the COVID pandemic, regulations on access to these pills were significantly loosened. Further complicating State-level approaches to limiting access to these abortifacients are “shield laws” in States like New York and California.

Les Bernal discussed predatory gambling, saying “ when gambling is run as a business, it creates a predatory adversarial relationship between business and customer” that in any other area would be prosecuted as fraud. “It’s a con,” he said, “a form of consumer financial fraud,” and discussed how online sports betting specifically targets children and teens.

Bernal went on to say that the promised financial benefits to States from gambling never materialize, and that many areas—he mentioned Ohio specifically—regret having allowed gambling.

Katherine Robertson, who currently serves as Chief Council in the Alabama Attorney General’s office and is running for Attorney General herself, spoke about the recent and upcoming changes to hemp and THC regulations both nationally and in Alabama, as ALPolitics.com has previously covered.

The day ended with hands-on training on hand-counting ballots using the system developed by Linda Rantz. To learn more about this method, a presentation by Rantz which includes training on the method may be seen HERE.

Dr. Frank has an extensive body of work on both YouTube and Rumble, and has a YouTube playlist which may be seen at THIS LINK.

Policy Conference materials, including schedule, speaker bios and handouts, are available HERE.

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