Introduction
Alabama is the birthplace of the modern voting rights movement. From Birmingham to Montgomery to Selma, Black Alabamians and their allies risked their lives to challenge laws designed to keep them out of the democratic process. Those struggles reshaped the nation and led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Yet today, Alabama remains one of the hardest states to vote in. While public debate frequently focuses on disproven claims of voter fraud and the supposed need for stricter election rules, those narratives ignore the far more pressing reality: Too many Alabamians are left out of the voting process entirely.
The real threat to democracy in Alabama is not voter fraud, which is exceedingly rare. It is widespread exclusion.
Across the state, hundreds of thousands of Alabamians are not participating in elections. This isn’t because they lack interest or civic responsibility but because structural barriers, confusing rules, and long-standing exclusionary policies make participation difficult, uncertain, or even impossible. As a result, the state’s elections are decided by a fraction of the population, and entire communities are left without a meaningful voice in decisions that shape their lives.
Missing voters include those who are eligible to vote but unregistered, as well as registered voters who have been placed on inactive status or face additional hurdles when attempting to cast a ballot. Alabama’s felony disenfranchisement system further compounds exclusion and is a central barrier to participation in elections for those who are systems-impacted.
Alabama’s missing voters population is larger than the combined population of Alabama’s four largest cities — Huntsville, Mobile, Birmingham, and Montgomery.
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These numbers are perhaps unsurprising given Alabama’s racist and violent political history and its modern-day legacy of persistent barriers to civic engagement. According to Dēmos’ Power Scorecard, Alabama ranks 49th in terms of democratic vitality. That places Alabama at the bottom in terms of how easily residents can engage in the political process to determine who represents them and how. That ranking also highlights the need for reforms to improve and ensure all voices are heard. Even more concerning, a close look at Alabama’s elections data tells us the status quo leaves behind voters from our most historically marginalized communities, namely Black and brown voters, voters with disabilities, and young voters.
In this report, Stand Up Mobile, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and Dēmos set the record straight regarding access to the ballot in Alabama. Using sound methodology and multiple data sources, we found Alabama has more than 815,000 missing voters. After providing additional data analysis concerning the unregistered and inactive voters in the state, we examine the structural barriers to voting in Alabama that are likely contributing to the large missing voter total. Our analysis of structural barriers includes the insights of some directly impacted voters who shared how they struggled to exercise their freedom to vote. Finally, we uplift commonsense policy changes the state could adopt to help every Alabamian exercise their fundamental right to vote. These policy recommendations are informed by the guidance and experiences of directly impacted communities. Lasting reform must be guided by the leadership of those most impacted by exclusion and the organizations already doing year-round civic engagement work across Alabama.
