Private: Dishonor in Alabama . . . Again

by Herman N. (Rusty) Johnson, Jr., Associate Professor of Law, Samford University Cumberland School of Law

The state of Alabama has once again relegated some of its citizens to second-class status.  The confluence of driver’s license office closures and a much maligned voter identification law fosters the dishonoring of Alabama’s black and impoverished citizens in a perpetual cycle of deprivation and struggle.

The genesis of the recent strife begins with Alabama’s enactment of a voter ID law in 2011, requiring citizens to present a valid, government-issued ID to vote at polls beginning in 2014. One of the most common forms of ID satisfying the state law are driver’s licenses. Pursuant to the state’s own study conducted in 2014, 10 percent of registered voters – 250,000 citizens – lack any form of the required photo ID, and 20 percent of registered voters – 500,000 citizens – lack a valid Alabama driver’s license or non-driver photo ID.

Ostensibly due to spending reductions in Alabama’s fiscal year 2016 budget, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (“ALEA”), of which the Driver License Division is a part, closed 31 part-time, satellite driver’s license offices. As a result of these closures, 28 of Alabama’s 67 counties will not have facilities to issue licenses to first-time driver’s license examinees or out-of-state transplants seeking an Alabama license. Those seeking license renewals may do so at county probate offices or online (yet those options present their own problems).

Citizens and civil rights defenders decry the closures due to the disproportionate burden massed upon black citizens and the impoverished in the largely rural counties. The closures eradicate eight of the ten counties in Alabama with the highest percentages of non-white, registered voters. Indeed, those eight counties comprise the only counties where more than 75% of the registered voters are black citizens. A refined analysis portrays a more troublesome picture. While 80 percent of the counties with non-white voting majorities suffer the closures, only 35 percent of the counties with white voting majorities bear any consequences (20 of the 57 remaining counties in Alabama), thus leaving 65 percent of the counties with majority-white voters largely unaffected. This disparity in the closures’ impact starkly portrays the inequity in ALEA’s budget cutting.

State officials maintain citizens in the affected counties do not face heightened obstacles to vote. They argue that the Board of Registrar in each county issues free voter photo IDs, and the Secretary of State deploys mobile registration vans to issue such IDs. In addition, citizens may renew driver’s licenses at county probate offices and online. There exist several problems with these options, however.

Notwithstanding the 250,000 citizens who lacked any form of required ID, as of November 2014 only 5,070 voter photo IDs had been issued by the Boards of Registrar, the mobile units, and the Secretary of State’s office. The voter photo IDs require proof of birthdate, which may entail additional time-consuming trips to obtain birth and marriage certificates. The voter photo IDs may only be used for voting, and to obtain them, recipients must swear under penalty of perjury that they do not possess any of the other acceptable forms of required ID. Moreover, renewal online assumes that citizens in the affected counties have personal computing and internet access, which may not be the case for a large number of those citizens.

In further support of the closures, ALEA states that the 31 closed offices process less than 5 percent of driver’s license transactions per year. However, ALEA’s Driver License Division processes 1.2 million licenses per year. Therefore, the closures will affect 60,000 license transactions per year in the affected counties. Even if some of those 60,000 transactions can be administered by county probate offices or online options, a large number, potentially in the thousands, may be affected by the closures. Furthermore, that only 5 percent of driver’s license transactions are processed by the closed offices does not lessen the importance of the offices for the citizens in those counties, especially if a large portion of those transactions comprise new driver’s license recipients.

Even if the aforementioned barriers did not exist, the availability of other options does little to blunt the inherent inequity in the driver’s license office closures. State officials discern no abridgement of voting rights because citizens have access to alternative forms of the required photo ID. That is, the state contends all citizens are equal in the attainment of a required photo ID because everyone has access to an office that will issue a particular form of ID. Yet this contention fails to acknowledge the state of affairs before the state intervened and closed the offices. Prior to the closures, all Alabama counties provided access to both driver’s licenses and voter photo IDs. After the closures, the state deprives citizens in majority-black and impoverished counties of one method of attaining a required ID. This change in the status quo further stigmatizes citizens who historically have borne the brunt of racism and economic inequality.

The state’s closures are even more pernicious because they may have been unnecessary. Although the fiscal year 2016 budget reduced ALEA’s appropriations by $11 million, the Alabama legislature offset the reduction by increasing driver’s license renewal fees 54 percent, from $23.50 to $36.25. Thus, the legislature endeavored to level-fund ALEA by offsetting the budget reduction with an increase in revenue for the agency. Furthermore, the legislature suggested in the budget that ALEA keep rural driver’s license offices open and reduce staff by cutting bureaucratic, mid-level management personnel in the state capital. Given ALEA’s admission that it is understaffed and has 103 vacant positions, any reduction in staff should have been accomplished by eliminating the vacant positions and maintaining a presence in the closed county offices. Indeed, that the 31 satellite offices were staffed part-time by personnel from divisional offices queries why there should have been any closures.

The coming months will reveal if Alabama has violated any laws, whether it be the Equal Protection Clause due to the putatively severe burden on the citizens’ franchise, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act due to the disproportionate abridgement of the right to vote upon citizens in majority-black counties, or some other law.

Nonetheless, beyond these legal prescriptions the harm is clearly extant. Once again, Alabama has dishonored its most disadvantaged citizens in its efforts to sustain some semblance of control over its economic fortunes. This dishonoring does not manifest solely in the affront to the legacy of voting rights leaders who braved state violence in Selma, Perry County, and other locales to secure the freedom of suffrage. The more shameful aspect of the closures is the continued stigma fastened upon citizens in Alabama’s Black Belt counties, the dishonoring that once again informs those constituents that they are secondary citizens when the state must pick its winners and losers in the balancing of benefits and burdens.

Democracy and Elections, Voting Rights