Alabama: Governor disfranchising thousands (document attached)
The Birmingham News reports: Eligible Alabama voters are being wrongly denied the right to cast a ballot in the coming election because of the way Gov. Bob Riley's administration defines a crime of moral turpitude, state court administrators said Wednesday.
The Administrative Office of Courts sent a memo Tuesday to county probate judges, sheriffs and circuit clerks saying that people who should be allowed to vote have been stricken from the voter rolls based on information from Riley's administration over which felony convictions bar people from voting.
AOC Director Callie Dietz and Legal Director Griffin Sikes Jr. told election officials that they hoped the memo would help them identify people who have been wrongly denied their right to vote during the past 18 months and notify them that they are eligible to vote Nov. 4. ...
The dispute centers on what felony convictions bar people from voting in Alabama. The state constitution says people convicted of felony crimes of "moral turpitude" cannot vote until they get their rights restored. However, state law does not define a crime of moral turpitude.
The position of the governor's office is that 480 of the state's 575 felony crimes are crimes of moral turpitude. Emerson said the legal staff "put in hundreds of hours into researching both case law and statutory law to come up with a comprehensive list of crimes of moral turpitude."
The AOC Legal Division takes a stricter view and lists only 70 felonies that a court, Alabama law or the state attorney general's opinion have determined should bar someone from voting. -- State courts say Alabama wrongly bars people from voting - al.com
The memo is here.