Alabamians line up to vote in the 2008 presidential election in Birmingham, Alabama. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.

By Ken Klippenstein

The NAACP’s poll monitoring team is already getting reports of voter suppression in the Alabama special election today, TYT Investigates has learned. According to Deuel Ross, assistant counsel at the NAACP’s Legal Defense & Educational Fund, they have received reports of people being turned away from voting because the name on their voter ID doesn’t perfectly match the name on their ballot.

Earlier this year, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill threatened to charge anyone who violates voter ID laws with a felony.

“If you have the Secretary of State saying that he’s going to jail people for voting improperly and then very shortly thereafter you find out that no one was voting improperly. . . . There’s always the possibility of voters feeling intimidated,” Ross told TYT investigates.

The NAACP also received a report that Jefferson County’s polling location received the wrong voting machine this morning, according to Ross.

There are a number of barriers to Alabamians voting aside from the problems arising today, Ross says.

“Unfortunately, there hasn’t been enough attention paid to what I think are issues that are suppressing African American voters in Alabama. One [part of the problem] is the systematic issues, like the voter ID law. Black voters are twice as likely to lack the acceptable ID as whites.”

In a previous Alabama election, Ross says they received reports that police were doing warrant checks at polling places.

Another issue that disproportionately affects black people is the lack of early voting in Alabama.

“In Alabama, they don’t have anything like early voting. The only way in which you can vote early is absentee voting, and the only way you can vote absentee is if you have some sort of excuse—like you’re going to be working on election day, or you’re disabled, something like that. African Americans are much less likely [to be able to get to their polling location]. I think about 15 percent of the black population in Alabama doesn’t have access to a vehicle.”

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