We could use a few more lawmakers like Adline Clarke

Adline Clarke finally got a win on Wednesday. 

It was a small one. It might ultimately mean absolutely no substantial change in Alabama. But for one moment, it was a win. 

It came during the House Judiciary Committee hearing, in which Clarke, for the umpteenth time, was trying to get her voting rights bill out of committee and onto the House floor. 

The bill shouldn’t be controversial. It simply offers automatic voting rights restoration to those who committed certain felonies and served their time, implements no-excuse absentee ballot voting (like we had during COVID), allows voter registration up until Election Day and establishes a voting rights committee to review proposed voting changes and their impacts on voters, particularly protected classes. 

None of this should be controversial in the least. 

Other states, including red ones, have all of this and manage to conduct their elections just fine. There is no risk of fraud. There is no reason to ensure that as many Alabama citizens as possible get a fair opportunity to vote. 

Clarke has been pushing the bill and its various components for years. 

On Wednesday, she finally got support from a powerful Republican ally—Representative Jim Hill, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Following a voice vote that was razor thin, Hill proclaimed the legislation from Clarke to have received a favorable report. 

Hill, rightfully, received praise from civil rights groups, from Democrats and from other members on the committee. (Hill is retiring at the end of session next week.)

But it’s Clarke who deserves much of the praise. 

For at least the past eight years, she’s carried a voting rights bill of some sort. Most of the time, those bills were utterly ignored by the Republican supermajority. Clarke would advocate for them, try to make deals and try to get her colleagues on the other side of the aisle to see the value in her legislation. She tried to relay stories about how real people were affected by Alabama’s draconian voting laws and practices. 

“We have one day to vote in this state—what if you’re sick?” Clarke said during a recent interview on the Alabama Politics This Week podcast. “What if you didn’t know you were going to be out of town for an emergency and weren’t able to register to vote absentee? What if you just had to work?”

Alabama is one of just three states in the country that doesn’t offer an early voting option of some sort. 

There is no legitimate excuse for this failure. 

But then, as our current Secretary of State, Wes Allen, proved again on Wednesday, having a legitimate excuse has never stopped the Republican supermajority from doing all it can to limit voting opportunities and disenfranchise as many voters as possible. 

In response to Clarke’s bill passing out of committee, Allen went on a mini-rant in which he said he was “100 percent opposed” to the legislation and claimed that it would cause “confusion” and “chaos.” 

Every other state in America, and D.C., has managed to successfully implement at least one of the provisions in Clarke’s voting rights bill. But in fairness, all of them do have more competent secretaries of state. 

This is the environment in which Clarke has tried to improve Alabama’s voting system for regular, working folks. She has banged her head against this wall of indifference and disenfranchisement for years now. 

She’s done it because it’s important. They’ve put up roadblocks because they desperately don’t want—can’t survive, actually—the majority of regular Alabamians reliably casting ballots. It would lead to more engagement. It would lead to people paying attention to the process. It would lead to historically oppressed and disenfranchised and ignored groups banding together to accomplish real, meaningful change at the ballot box. 

They know it. That’s why they fight it so hard. 

Thankfully, we’ve got people like Adline Clarke fighting just as hard.