'Clyde Martin lost his job as a poll worker because he pushed back on [Alabama Republican Party Chairman] John Wahl, insisting Wahl and his extended family use photo ID to vote, as all Alabamians are now expected to do.' -columnist WarOnDumb
When poll workers asked Alabama GOP Chairman John Wahl for his voter ID, he gave them a card they'd never seen before, ostensibly from the State Auditor's office identifying him as a press secretary. When challenged at the polls, Wahl texted this photo to the Limestone County Probate court. The Alabama Finance Department says it has no record of Wahl working for the state and it never issued him an employee ID badge.
And some members of the state Republican Party chairman’s family have been disenfranchised for lack of photo ID.Limestone County, along the Tennessee line just west of Huntsville, stands out in Alabama politics for being one of the last to transition from a Democratic stronghold to a Republican one. Several latecomers to the new Republican majority there have been treated with partisan skepticism or kicked off ballots for not being Republican enough.
“Members of this community have been subjected to ridicule and called names like ‘the goat people’ just because they live a different lifestyle,” Wahl says, referring to a Facebook comment he shared with me. Those records show that in recent years more than $400,000 of political money has flowed to the business, mostly for advertising buys, polling and political consulting. In some campaign reports, the Wahl family’s address appears as the address of the Limestone County Republican Party itself.Benjamin Harrison, a former county commissioner and current Republican nominee for Alabama House District 2, works for the company, according to Harrison’s disclosures with the Alabama Ethics Commission.
But not everyone in his family feels comfortable being photographed, he says. For them, it’s a religious objection.“Amish, Mennonites, and other Anabaptists are well known for their concerns about pictures or the way pictures are used,” Wahl said. “They are definitely not normal in our modern culture, but they shouldn’t be attacked or discriminated against for choosing a different lifestyle.”
According to state voter records, eight of the Wahl family members living on their farm are registered to vote. Martin says he knows some of the Wahls but not all of them, and he wasn’t comfortable swearing an affidavit that he could “positively identify” them all as registered voters, as required under the law before signing an affidavit.
A public records request to the Limestone County Probate Court returned a photograph of the badge Wahl had texted to the probate judge during one of the disputes with poll workers. The badge has Wahl’s photograph and name, and it features a copy of the State Seal. But I already had. Through its general counsel and pursuant to my records requests, the Finance Department showed me a list of State Auditor employees it had given badges, both active and inactive. Wahl’s name was not among them.
Martin also sent an email to Secretary of State John Merrill asking him for clarity regarding the law. In particular, Martin wanted to know what the standard “positively identify” meant when voters asked poll workers to fill out affidavits. Writing as a “concerned citizen, and as Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party,” Wahl told the local appointment committee in an April 28 email that it shouldn’t reappoint Martin to work the next election.
Indeed, in his email to Wahl, Martin said he would insist on the Wahls voting by a provisional ballot if they didn’t show photo ID at the polling place. Allowing voters to vote without ID was an opening for someone to cheat, Martin argued. Martin appeared before the local committee, where he argued he was trying to avoid complications at the polls and that he wanted to make sure everyone was following the law. He left the meeting thinking the committee was on his side, but the next day, he learned otherwise.
“The difficulty is they know the laws of proper ID in the state of Alabama and yet they come and they don’t have the proper ID and then they want to vote,” Chadwell said. “And so there is a method for those who don’t have proper ID — you use the provisional vote — and they won’t do it.”
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