Campaign Platform

Andrew Sorrell’s Honest Elections PLAN:

artner with more states to further expand the Alabama Voter Integrity Database (AVID) in order to remove duplicates from the voter rolls, catch individuals who are voting in two states during the same election cycle, remove registrations for dead people, and block those who commit a disqualifying felony. Alabama currently exchanges voter roll date with nine other states, and my goal as Secretary of State is to triple the number of partner states in my first term.

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ower fees for Secretary of State services, including the current $38,000 cost to purchase the list of registered voters. If an election integrity activist or concerned citizen wants to secure our voter list to confirm the data it contains, they must shell out an outrageous $38,000. Alabama has the highest fees of any state in the nation. Most states charge a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for the same information, and some even provide it for free.  I pledge to slash the cost of purchasing the voter rolls by 90% or more when I am elected. 

Additionally, we will slash some business service fees by 50% to 90%. The list of fees charged by the Secretary of State’s office runs nine pages long. Many of these fees are exorbitant, such as the $100 fee to close a business, or the $100 fee to update a business’ registered agent, which is a simple name and address change that takes just seconds to enter. Because reducing these fees will require the Legislature to change law, my previous experience as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives and the relationships I built will prove valuable to the effort.

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udit our elections! Alabama is the only state in the nation that does not mandate a post-election audit.  While serving as a state representative in 2022, I voted to pass a pilot program that audited three counties in Alabama.  When this one-time audit was completed, it was discovered that the tabulator count in one county did not match the hand count result, even after multiple hand counts. 

It is incredibly important that we hand count our paper ballots to make sure that it matches the tabulator result.  Even the manufacturer of the DS-200 machines we use in Alabama — Election Systems and Software — recommends a hand count audit, yet we still do not do it. Election audit legislation has passed the Alabama House of Representatives for the past three years running, but the State Senate has refused to follow suit.  As your next Secretary of State, mandating election audits will be my #1 priority!

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ew division of Election Integrity in the Secretary of State’s office. Other states have election integrity divisions, but Alabama does not.  I will create a new division whose sole responsibility is cleaning up voter rolls, investigating fraud, and hardening our election system against cheating and  manipulation,  Many complaints of election fraud happen each election cycle, and it is important that we have an adequate size staff to investigate these claims.  When criminal activity such as ballot harvesting, duplicate voting, vote buying, voting in the name of another, or voting by ineligible felons or illegal immigrants is discovered, that information will be relayed to local district attorneys and the Attorney General’s office for prosecution. It is time for Alabama to send a message that we are serious about election integrity, and that we will prosecute voter fraud to the fullest extent.

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Election Philosophy

I support the way Alabama does elections currently:

  1. We vote in person — no mass mailouts of ballots

  2. We vote on election day — not election week or election month

  3. We vote with a Photo ID — absolutely essential to prevent election fraud!

  4. We vote on paper ballots — I am 100% opposed to electronic voting machines, which can be hacked and manipulated and do not provide individual ballots for recounts.

If you stray from these four key pillars of election integrity, you begin having all the election problems that we see other states having. Bills are regularly introduced here in Alabama to allow for mass mail outs of ballots, no-excuse absentee voting, and repealing Photo Voter ID requirements. I will fight all efforts by the Alabama Legislature to change any of these four safeguards we currently have in place.

Ballot Watermarking

In the aftermath of the 2020 elections, the state of Georgia passed a law requiring ballots to be watermarked.  Unfortunately, Alabama has not followed suit.  In fact, I am the first statewide public official to openly advocate for this commonsense election safeguard.  Watermarked ballots allow poll workers to quickly and easily discern between a real ballot and a fake one.  It also prevents anyone from photocopying a legitimate ballot and running it through a tabulator at the polls. 

One election integrity activist in Alabama, Angela Shepherd, did photocopy her absentee ballot and took the copies with her to the public ballot testing at the Lee County Courthouse before the 2022 General Election.  The paper she copied the ballot onto was too wide, so she hand-trimmed the ballots and ran them through the machine, which counted every single one of them. A video of her experiment with the bogus ballots went viral. 

Our machines must be able to identify a fake ballot and reject it.  The cost to do this is negligible.  In fact, Georgia pays less for their ballots than Alabama does, yet their ballots are more secure. As your next Secretary of State, I will push the Legislature to require that all ballots in Alabama are watermarked.

Voter Registration Advisory Board

I will change the Voter Registration Advisory Board to be the Voter Registration and Election Integrity Advisory Board.  The reason for this is simple — more than 95% of all eligible Alabamians are already registered to vote.  Solving our election integrity issues must demand equal focus with voter registration. I will expand the board membership and involve representatives from the Board of Registrars, Probate Judges, Circuit Clerks, Sheriffs, the Secretary of State’s office, and concerned citizens who are the foot soldiers fighting for election integrity.

Artificial Intelligence in Campaigns

With the technological advances of the 21st century, new challenges are created for election administrators, and the use of AI in campaigns is a perfect example of this.  It is now possible to use AI to generate pictures or video of political opponents saying or doing things they do not even support.  This is why I will demand legislation requiring a disclaimer for any electioneering communication that was generated with Artificial Intelligence.  We cannot allow AI to be used to trick the voting public into believing a political candidate said or did something that they did not say or do.

Making Sure Illegals Don’t Vote

At the federal level, the SAVE (the Safeguard American Voters Eligibility) Act has passed the House but has not yet passed the Senate.  This common-sense bill requires proof of citizenship before someone can register to vote in a federal election. Although the legislation has stalled in Washington, D.C., we must implement it in our state immediately.

In Alabama, there are currently 5 qualifications to register to vote:

  1. Must be a U.S. Citizen

  2. Resident of the state

  3. At least 18 years old

  4. Must not have been convicted of a disqualifying felony

  5. Not declared mentally incompetent by a court

The problem is that no actual proof of citizenship is required to be presented in Alabama. President Trump has issued an executive order requiring states to collect “Documentary proof of United States Citizenship” to vote in federal elections, and I believe Alabama must demand similar proof to vote in state and local elections, as well.

Our voter registration forms do ask a citizenship question, but the only proof required is their word. In order to get serious about election integrity, we must require proof of citizenship to register to vote in any election in Alabama.

Pay Raises for Registrars and Poll Workers

In 2023, a pay raise bill was passed that set daily pay for poll workers at $125 and inspectors at $150.  In 2025, the Alabama Legislature also awarded a pay raise to members of the Board of Registrars, raising them to $115 per day from the state in addition to supplements that some counties fund. Registrars are not technically state or county employees, so they do not receive health or retirement benefits in Alabama.  Because I currently appoint 66 registrars across Alabama as State Auditor, I know that the low salary makes it challenging to find qualified individuals to fill these positions.

Our registrars serve out of a sense of duty and commitment to secure elections, but low pay and no benefits means few are willing to take the job. I believe our registrars should earn a minimum of $150 per day for their work and receive benefits like all other state employees receive.

Probate Judges in Alabama have had challenges finding enough people to work the polls due to the low rate of pay.  In Colbert County, where my family and I live, more than 200 poll workers are needed to administrate every election. For a roughly 13-hour workday, they are only paid $125, which amounts to less than $10/hour and barely exceeds the minimum wage.  Again, poll workers volunteer for these jobs out of a sense of civic duty, but they deserve more than they are currently earning.  As your Secretary of State, I will push legislation raising poll worker pay by at least $25 above its current level.

Public Notices

While serving in the Alabama House of Representative, I sponsored legislation to move all public notice requirements to the Secretary of State’s website, and I continue to support this commonsense solution that will save taxpayers millions of dollars each year.  Local legislative bills, construction jobs, voter rolls, and numerous other legal notices are published each year in local newspapers at a high cost to the taxpayers.  While this system may have made sense 50 years ago, with the internet accessible by everyone and newspaper readership at an all-time low, it is no longer cost effective, logical, or justified. 

Some public notices, such as Open Meetings Act requirements, are already published on the Secretary of State’s website, so it makes sense to require ALL public notices to be posted there.  Alabama citizens could find all of them sorted by county in one convenient place that is easily accessed in seconds.  Currently, someone living in Madison County that wanted to read Baldwin County public notices would have to drive to Baldwin County and buy a local newspaper, which is absurd. By posting them online, anyone with access to an internet connection can find them quickly.  It provides transparency and convenience without costing anyone a dime.