The Alabama Republican Party has distributed specially designed "Stop Obamacare!" voter registration forms -- they're a regular form on the front, but the back says "I want to do my part to stop Obamacare!" in BIG letters -- see an image below the fold. The forms also have volunteer sign up opportunities and a place to provide an email address. Unlike regular Voter Reg. forms which are to be sent directly to county registrars, these are addressed to the "Alabama Republican Pary" (sic), postage paid. The Republican Secretary of State has instructed registrars to process these forms in the normal fashion.
I've never seen voter registration forms that weren't either the ones provided by the registrar's office or a direct reproduction of the ones provided by the registrar and I've never seen one with what amounts to a political endorsement on it. Is this kosher?
Here's a scan of a fax of the back of the Stop Obamacare form - click to see a larger image.:
Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman's website has this notice at the top today:
IMPORTANT VOTER REGISTRATION INFORMATION
The Secretary of State’s Office has recently learned that a voter registration form has been mailed to some Alabama residents by a state political party. These registration forms have a return address for the Alabama Republican Party, rather than the local Board of Registrars. The Secretary of State has advised the county Boards of Registrars to process these completed forms as they would any other voter registration forms they receive.
An Alabama GOP spokesperson says "we did check with multiple attorneys on this before we went with it." No word on what the attorneys said, but apparently they thought it was a safe bet because they've distributed a ton of these things. Section 17 of the Alabama Code deals with elections and there isn't much there about the actual registration form except "The Secretary of State may promulgate rules for the receipt of applications for registration and the expedient administration of those applications". A local attorney opined that ...
"The forms violate state law, since it's the Secretary of State that prescribes the forms and they didn't -- and wouldn't ever -- approve forms with a return address to any entity other than the registrars or their office. (In fact, in the late 90s, they had to address a similar situation where someone distributed forms with a different return address.) The GOP forms violate federal law in that they were not precleared by the U.S. Department of Justice pursuant to the Voting Rights Act."
Again, I know next to nothing about legal matters, but if this does turn out to be legal and aboveboard, the Alabama Democratic Party ought to do some turnabout is fair play on this -- the Secretary of State can hardly OK it for one party and prohibit it for the other. We don't register by party in Alabama, so information on the political leaning of registered voters is extremely valuable. Count on it, very few Democratic voters will fill out a form that has "I want to stop Obamacare!" printed on it, so their voter screening is done. And with these forms being returned to the party they can harvest that info and possibly an email address and volunteer info for these new voters. That's gold in the next election.
However, the initial question remains: is this kind of information allowed on a voter registration form and is it legal to put a return to address other than the local registrar on a pre-printed form?