A federal judge on Sept. 24 blocked parts of an Alabama law, ruling that prohibiting assistance to some mail-in voters violates the federal Voting Rights Act.
The law, Senate Bill 1, bars voters from paying or providing gifts to people to distribute, order, request, collect, prefill, complete, obtain, or deliver applications for mail-in ballots, which are also known as absentee ballots.
The law, enacted earlier this year, also prohibits people, even if they’re not receiving payment or gifts, from submitting completed absentee ballot applications other than their own.
People who violate the law face up to 20 years in prison.
U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor said in the new ruling that the provisions violate the Voting Rights Act, Section 208 which states that blind, disabled, and illiterate voters can receive voting assistance from “a person of the voter’s choice, other than the voter’s employer or agent of that employer or officer or agent of the voter’s union.”…