The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Alabama has no duty to electronically disclose the names of convicted felons who have been purged from the state’s list of registered voters, Courthouse News reports. The order reverses a lower court decision from October 2022 in which U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson ordered the state to provide electronic records to Greater Birmingham Ministries, a nonprofit whose mission includes restoring the right to vote for the formerly incarcerated. The state had argued that the National Voter Registration Act only requires in-person review or paper production of the list, and the court agreed, finding that the act does not permit the requester to receive such records “in any manner they choose.” Instead, the court found, “the act requires states to make covered records available in two ways: (1) for ‘public inspection,’ and (2) ‘where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost.’”
The National Voter Registration Act does “squarely cover” the requested records, the appellate court found. But it does not require electronic production as requested. And it doesn’t govern fees. The Alabama secretary of state had offered to provide the names of every person who had been removed from the voter rolls since 2020, regardless of cause, on paper or via public inspection, for a fee of one cent per name. The purged list contained the names of 135,074 individuals, for a proposed cost of $1,350.74. The nonprofit rejected the offer, requesting the secretary narrow the scope to comprise convicted felons and to provide the list electronically, rather than on paper. The secretary complied with the request only after Thompson’s order, reaching a final cost of $429.17, which the nonprofit paid. The state nevertheless appealed and oral arguments were held in November 2023.