Former AL SecState John Merrill Talks Voter Rolls, Registrars, AVID, ERIC

Former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has publicly disagreed with comments made by current Secretary of State Wes Allen about Alabama’s voter rolls. Recently, Merrill released a newsletter to “set the record straight” about Allen’s claims before Congress recently.

ALPolitics.com reached out to Sec. Merrill about this issue, and the dust up between him and Sec. Allen.

“I really don't have a dust up with Wes Allen,” Merrill said. “One thing that is interesting to me is how individuals in today's political environment will just say whatever they think they need to say, or whatever they have a desire to say, and often the facts are unchecked. I’ve seen that happen numerous times, but when it happened in a congressional testimony recently, I just felt like I needed to give it some attention.”

“He (Allen) introduced some numbers about our voter roles in congressional testimony, and those numbers were not accurate. When he talked about the removal of more than half a million people from the voter rolls in the two and a half years that he's been in office, that clearly was not accurate.” 

“In the eight years that I served in that role (as Alabama Secretary of State), we registered 2,215,229 new voters in the state of Alabama. No state in the union actually registered more voters per capita than we did, and very few states actually registered as many voters as we did. When we left office we had 3,702,689 registered voters in the state. Now, when I took office, we had 2.9-plus million voters in the voter rolls. Then, with the addition of the 2.2 million, we actually removed more than 1.5 million people from the roles in that eight year period of time. That’s what left us with the 3,702,689 (voters on the rolls when Merril left office).

“When you add up all those numbers and delete the ones that needed to be removed, we averaged approximately 100,000 new voters being added to the rolls per year.

“We were known for our efforts in extending and promoting voter registration and photo ID delivery in the state of Alabama. We added 100,000 voters to the roles annually for eight years because we ended up with 800,000 somebody. I don't remember exactly what that number was the other numbers I have memorized but more than 800,000 people were actually added to our vote rolls.

“So, you understand that if someone said they removed 500,000 people from the voter rolls and they've only been in office for two and a half years, that would mean for the numbers to be where they are right now—because he's only got about 60,000 people more on the rolls than he had when I left office—if that's the case, he had to register 1 million to remove 500,000.

“That does not make sense. That’s the reason why I said like President Abraham Lincoln said you can fool some of the people some of the time. You can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. I think it's important to know that.”

Sec. Merrill went on to emphasize the importance of the Registrars in the process of only adding legal voters to the rolls.

“We have 201 Registrars in the State of Alabama. That's in the 68 jurisdictions in the 67 counties. They're the only people that can actually remove or add people to the voter rolls. If they've been properly trained, if they’re doing their job the way they’re supposed to, and they are adding and removing people according to statute,” Merrill said.

“If  they're not doing that, then those Registrars need to be removed. We removed some registrars when I was in office. It had actually been more than 10 years that one had been removed when I arrived there, but we removed several during the years I was in office.”

ALPolitics.com asked Sec. Merrill to respond to the recent decision by the Trump DoJ to dismiss a Biden-era case related to the inappropriate removal of voters from Alabama’s rolls. As previously reported, Allen had ordered the removal of 3,251 potential noncitizen voters 84 days before the 2024 election in violation of the “90 Day Rule” of the National Voter Registration Act. However, nearly 2,000 of these voters were reactivated either by proving themselves to be eligible or by the Secretary’s office before the election.

With regards to the voter removal within 90 days of the election, Merrill said, “Yes sir, that's illegal. When you're within that window, that's not allowed by law. Those individuals cannot be removed, and they have to remain on the voter rolls through the election process. And actually, he removed them, if I remember the story correctly, under the guise that those individuals were not citizens of the United States. But, when some reporters actually dug into the story. It was revealed that most of those people that were removed were actually United States citizens. Look, those people should have been removed according to standard practice, if the registrars are actually following the protocol.”

Regarding Secretary Allen’s work to create the Alabama Voter Integrity Database (AVID), Merrill said, “Well, I think what he’s attempting to do is to create a system that would replace the system that actually did more than the system that he has created.”

“The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) involved more States at the time that I was the Secretary, We joined ERIC when I was Secretary. Actually, Lieutenant Governor Will Ainsworth passed that, one of the most meaningful pieces of legislation that he passed during his service as a Member of the House of Representatives. He passed that legislation that allowed us to join the ERIC system and the Kansas Interstate Cross Check System.

“The one thing that the AVID system has not been able to do—and of course I'm sure they're trying to make improvements all the time—but it could not check against the number of people who may have voted in more than one election in the same election cycle. So, if you voted in Kansas and you voted in Alabama, the ERIC system would pick that up. Even if you had a relationship with the sister State, if somebody had done that, the AVID system would not pick it up.”

When asked about questions that have been raised about the ERIC system being used by left-leaning groups, Merrill said:

“Well, there have been a lot of people who’ve said that, but there's never been any incident of an occurrence, that has been publicly introduced, that actually occurred where individuals had the trust and confidence of the process violated. Names are only used by the members of the system.

“It's the same conversation that people had, where people said George Soros was the one that created ERIC and he gave the money for it. Well, that's not true, and there's no paper trail to prove that. Whether it be emails, whether it be letters, whether it be any kind of transaction that would've taken place financially, none of that has occurred. The ERIC system was started by the Pew Charitable Trust, of which I understand that George Soros is a contributor. But, so are people that live in Montgomery, so are people that live in Huntsville, in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa and all across the State. So, I think it's important to make sure that you don't spread these false rumors and innuendo related to programs that are this sensitive, and this important to election administration.”

ALPolitics.com appreciates the time Sec. Merrill spent answering our questions. His newsletter that prompted this interview may be found HERE.

ALPolitics.com also reached out to Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen for comments, but neither he nor his office had responded by press time.