Restore Voting Rights for Alabamians
- Raised
- $0
- Goal
- $100,000
OUR DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS: ALABAMA SNAPSHOT
In Alabama, over 300,000 adults are living with a felony conviction, with an incarceration rate of 898 per 100,000 people (including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities). Such alarming incarceration rates are created by systemic and structural barriers, such as inequitable and complex state laws, gerrymandered maps, persistent racist undercurrents, fragmented criminal data, voting tied to repayment of court debt, and misinformation.
Access to the ballot box is further complicated by Alabama’s restoration guidelines. If convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, a person may restore their voting rights through a pardon process or have their convictions cleared through the Certificate of Eligibility to Register to Vote (CERV) process. If not convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, an individual may never have lost their right to vote. Navigating eligibility, determining next steps, and then enlisting legal, financial, and moral support makes restoring one’s voting rights near impossible.
Furthermore, Alabama has a persistent problem of low voter turnout. The overall turnout rate of eligible voters in Alabama in the 2024 presidential general election was 58.9%, whereas the national average for the same year was 64.1%. Even worse, for the June 2026 Primary Runoff Elections, voter turnout was 10.72%.
A litany of barriers preventing voting rights restoration, in addition to a culture of low voter turnout, leaves thousands of Alabamians locked out from fully participating in civic society, further silencing their voices and alienating them from our democracy.
Free Our Vote is changing this. The time is now.