This is an opinion column.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has some thoughts on voter fraud and election integrity, and, under the right circ*mstances, he’ll share them.
When Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Marshall sued to overturn the results.
Later, he appeared before Congress to testify as an expert witness. But when asked repeatedly whether President Joe Biden had been duly elected, Marshall refused to answer.
Circ*mstances matter a lot to Marshall’s willingness to talk about voter issues.
Take, for instance, the case of John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. After the Alabama secretary of state forwarded Marshall complaints about Wahl not using proper voter ID …
Silence.
Documents obtained by AL.com through a public information request show that, not one but two Alabama secretaries of state, both Republicans, referred voter fraud allegations regarding Wahl to prosecutors.
Nothing seems to have come of either.
One of those two secretaries of state was John Merrill. He sent a complaint to Brian Jones, the Republican district attorney in Limestone County, where Wahl lives and votes. I called Jones this week to ask what happened to the complaint. He said he passed it up the chain to Marshall.
And according to records recently obtained for this column, that wasn’t the only complaint sent to prosecutors. State records show that in February 2023, newly elected Secretary of State Wes Allen also forwarded a complaint about Wahl to prosecutors.
The newly obtained records show Allen sent that one directly to Marshall.
So far Marshall has said and done nothing about either. He won’t even return a call about why the head of the GOP seems free to flout the state’s voter ID laws.
Here’s the backstory.
Wahl’s family had been known in Limestone County for their special approach to the state’s voter ID laws. According to court records, Wahl’s immediate relatives object to what they call “biometric” identification, including photo ID, which they believe to be the Mark of the Beast foretold in Revelation.
Alabama’s voter ID law does not give exemptions for religious objections.
In 2016, Wahl’s brother Joshua testified in a deposition for the NAACP, which had challenged the law in federal court. That lawsuit ultimately failed.
Despite the defeat, John Wahl — who had become chairman of the Alabama Republican Party — celebrated the state’s court victory on Twitter in 2021 as a win for “fair elections.”
Marshall lauded the court victory, too.
“Opponents have repeatedly argued that Alabama’s voter ID law’s requirement that a voter must provide a photo ID is overly burdensome,” Marshall said in a press release in 2020. “As I have previously stated, Alabama’s voter identification law, by both design and practice, is easily satisfied, and it contains procedures to allow anyone who does not have a photo ID to obtain one.”
However, according to poll workers, when Wahl showed up to vote in 2022, instead of using a drivers license to vote, he presented poll workers with what appeared to be a state employee badge.
Only, Wahl wasn’t a state employee. And the badge wasn’t a state employee ID, like those used by state employees. Wahl had made it himself, with permission, he said, from then-state Auditor Jim Ziegler.
When I asked then-Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill whether the badge was an acceptable form of voter ID, Merrill said no.
“It does not meet the standard of any voter ID requirements listed under 17-9-30,” Merrill said in 2022, two months before his office forwarded the first complaint to prosecutors.
When I interviewed him then, Wahl agreed the legality of his ID was an issue.
“That’s a legitimate question,” Wahl said then.
And it was a question others had, as well.
When one of those poll workers questioned Wahl’s ID, Wahl asked the Limestone County Probate judge to have that poll worker removed. The poll worker, Clyde Martin, was later told his services were no longer needed.
After I reported about this in 2022, someone filed a complaint with the Alabama Secretary of State.
In December 2022, Merrill’s chief of staff, Clay Helms, forwarded a complaint their office received to Limestone County District Attorney Brian C. T. Jones.
I called Jones to ask what happened to the complaint.
Jones told me that he’s friends with Wahl and his brother Noah, who is chairman of the Limestone County Republican Party to which Jones belongs, so he turned it over to the Alabama Attorney General’s office to deal with, just as he had done with the case involving Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely.
“From Blakely on out, we’ve got a lot of stuff that has gone to Montgomery,” Jones said. “I’ve reached that point in my career —I said, ‘OK, send it to Montgomery. That’s why they make the big money.’”
Marshall’s office prosecuted Blakely, a Democrat, in 2021 and returned a conviction, after the Alabama Ethics Commission referred him on ethics law violations. Marshall’s office did not bring a case against Wahl.
But the first complaint against Wahl was not the last. In January 2023, newly elected Secretary of State Wes Allen took office. He also forwarded another complaint to prosecutors, this time to Marshall directly.
Wahl did not respond to requests for comment. Far suffering consequences, after Wahl got busted voting with an ID he made himself, he was elected to be vice-chair of the Republican National Committee, representing the southeast.
Allen’s reply to my public information request omitted the complaints themselves and his office redacted the names of those making them, so there’s no way to tell if their complaints received any kind of response.
Instead, I reached out again last week to ask the poll workers who dealt with Wahl. If there had been any sort of investigation, they’d be the logical first witnesses to interview. I asked them whether anyone from the state ever contacted them to verify what they told me in 2022.
Nope.
So, I reached out to the AG’s office directly.
“We make sure the individual who says they are, can prove who they are and can validly cast that vote,” Marshall said. “I think that is important for the integrity of the process, to be able to eliminate possibilities of fraud, and we’ve seen it work.”
Only that’s not what Marshall said to me in 2024. That’s what he told Capitol Journal in 2020. You know, under the right circ*mstances.
Today, there’s no reply, no answers, and no investigation. No comment. Not even a “no comment.” No anything.
Only silence.
RELATED COLUMNS BY KYLE WHITMIRE
Alabama GOP chair refused to show license to vote. That became a problem for poll workers.
Alabama GOP chair’s family believed voter ID was mark of the beast, brother said in deposition
Alabama GOP chairman made the photo ID he used to vote
Kyle Whitmire is the 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. You can follow him on Threads here and subscribe to his weekly newsletter, Alabamafication.
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