Alabama
Judge blocks one part of new Alabama absentee ballot restrictions
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a portion of a new Alabama law limiting help with absentee ballot applications, saying it violates the Voting Rights Act’s assurances that voters who are blind, disabled or cannot read can get help from a person of their choice.
Chief U.S. District Judge David Proctor issued a preliminary injunction stating that the law’s ban on gifts and payments for help with an absentee ballot application “are not enforceable as to blind, disabled, or illiterate voters.”
“The court easily concludes, after reviewing its language, that SB 1 unduly burdens the rights of Section 208 voters to make a choice about who may assist them in obtaining and returning an absentee ballot,” Proctor wrote.
The injunction blocked only one portion of the new law. Most of the law, which was challenged by voter outreach groups, remains in effect. Alabama is one of several Republican-led states imposing new limits on voter assistance.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office indicated in a court filing that it is appealing the decision.
The new law, originally known as Senate Bill 1, makes it illegal to distribute an absentee ballot application that is prefilled with information such as the voter’s name or to return another person’s absentee ballot application. The new law also makes it a felony to give or receive a payment or a gift “for distributing, ordering, requesting, collecting, completing, prefilling, obtaining, or delivering a voter’s absentee ballot application.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, the Legal Defense Fund, Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program and the Campaign Legal Center filed a lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of voter outreach groups. Proctor previously dismissed most of the claims.
The voter outreach groups said their paid staff members or volunteers, who are given gas money or food, could face prosecution for helping disabled voters with an application.
“Our democracy works best when everybody can participate in it, and this ruling prevents the enforcement of a cruel law that would have suppressed the voices of blind, disabled, and low-literacy voters,” the organizations said.
In a request to stay the injunction, Marshall’s office wrote that the decision does not follow “common sense.” They argued anyone could help a disabled voter, but “just not in exchange for cash or gifts.” The state had argued the prohibitions are needed to stop paid operatives from corralling large numbers of absentee votes.
“Alabama’s elections will be less secure and the voting rights of the State’s most vulnerable voters less protected if SB1’s injunction remains in place,” Marshall’s office wrote.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
What is it about the swaggering, sweltering heat of summer that stirs up so much bloodlust? By now it’s a platitude that murder and other violent crime rates rise when the weather gets hotter. And while there’s no time of year Alabama’s criminal justice and correctional systems don’t discriminate against Black people, recent years have demonstrated summertime is when Alabama especially seems to torture Black men with its racist capital punishment regime.
I wrote as much in my column “Alabama’s summer 2024 legal lynching” when I posited “it’s not officially summer in Alabama until a Black man’s been lynched — legally or illegally[.]” At the time I observed: “Alabama still has a despicable penchant for using a vestige of slavery — the death penalty — in the 21st century to subjugate and to disproportionately dehumanize its poor Black and brown condemned citizens, most of whom grew up in impoverished and hellacious homes very far from the kind of safe, stable, and suitably nurturing and loving environments many Alabama families take for granted.”
The name of that 2024 column was taken from an earlier essay I titled “Alabama’s summer 2022 legal lynching” concerning the execution of Joe Nathan James Jr.; in that 2022 piece I invoked “legendary Alabama lawyer [and Equal Justice Initiative Executive Director] Bryan Stevenson” who insists “[t]he death penalty’s roots are clearly linked to the legacy of lynching” and that “[w]e need to own up to the way racial bias and legalized racial subordination have compromised our ability to implement criminal justice.”
In that vein but perhaps more depressingly, more drearily, I expounded in the summer of 2023 in “Stopping Alabama’s addiction to torture” on how “Alabama’s addiction to torturing poor people — disproportionately Black and brown people — and more often than not, people who are severely mentally ill with inhumane correctional institutions, a dysfunctional parole system, and, in some cases, a secretive and sadistic lethal injection protocol, has been going on for so long, overwhelmingly, Alabamians and Americans are desensitized to it.”
After James was tortured, in the piece “Fascism, racism, sexism and torture: Alabama’s last execution had it all,” I implored: “Investigations should be launched immediately, and not just into the sexist jackasses ogling the outfits of female reporters, but, also, into why Alabama keeps torturing to death poor, disproportionately Black men, most of whom were condemned — as famed death penalty attorney Stephen Bright long ago observed — because they had the worst lawyer, not because they committed the worst crime.”
Fast-forward to this summer with the looming execution of another poor Black man, Jeffrey Lee. Despite lingering questions about the inequity, immorality, and inhumanity of it, Alabama is poised to execute Lee by nitrogen-gassing or “nitrogen hypoxia” sometime during a 30-hour window starting June 11 and ending June 12.
Ominously, Alabama’s last nitrogen-gassing was the October 23rd torture of yet another Black man named Anthony Boyd. Following Boyd’s execution, the New York Times reported “Witnesses described seeing Mr. Boyd convulse and heave for about 15 minutes before being pronounced dead about 15 minutes later.” The Times recounted that “Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist in Alabama who witnessed the execution, said he counted Mr. Boyd gasp for air for more than 225 times before he was pronounced dead.” Reverend Jeff Hood, a spiritual advisor to Mr. Boyd who was in the execution chamber, was also reported saying Boyd was “suffocating, trying to breathe for 19 minutes.”
Alabama has savagely used nitrogen to kill seven men so far; 5 of these men were white and two were Black. Since this column is about Alabama’s torture of Black men, I want to conclude by focusing on Alabama’s first experimental nitrogen-gassing of a Black man, the February 2025 torture-execution of Demetrius Frazier. Reporter Ivana Hrynkiw who witnessed Frazier’s last minutes alive described how “About 6:11 p.m., Frazier started waiving his hands in circles toward his body. About a minute later his hands stopped moving. At approximately 6:12 p.m. Frazier clenched his face, and his nostrils flared, while his hands quivered. He appeared to say something, which was inaudible to the three witness rooms. His legs slightly lifted up off the gurney and he gasped. Then, his head rolled to the right side. Frazier exhibited sporadic gasping and shallow breathing until about 6:20 p.m. The curtains closed at 6:29 p.m., and his time of death declared seven minutes later[.]”
Adding to its extensive history of racial violence during and after slavery, the gas-torturing of Demetrius Frazier and Anthony Boyd are part of the modern-day record of Black men Alabama’s tortured to death the state will be building on if it goes forward with the nitrogen-gassing of Jeffrey Lee.
This essay was first published by The Times of Israel. It is being published here with the permission of the author.
Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public. defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Read more of his writing at http://www.stephenacooper.net.
We’re less than three months from the start of Georgia’s 2026 season, with the Bulldogs opening against Tennessee State on Sept. 5.
But there’s still plenty of excitement about the upcoming campaign, especially after DraftKings shared some early look-ahead lines for several Georgia games during the upcoming season.
The first is against Oklahoma, who the Bulldogs will play on Sept. 26. The Bulldogs are a 10-point favorite over the visiting Sooners. This will be a matchup of College Football Playoff participants from last season.
This will be the first time the two teams meet as conference foes.
The next Georgia game to receive a look-ahead line was its Oct. 10 trip to Alabama. Despite not having won in Tuscaloosa, Alabama since 2007, Georgia is listed as a 3-point road favorite over the Crimson Tide.
Alabama and Georgia split their two meetings last season, with Alabama winning 24-21 in Athens before Georgia got its revenge in the SEC championship game with a 28-7 win. Alabama beat Georgia 41-34 in 2024, which was the last time Georgia visited Bryant-Denny Stadium.
The following will see Georgia return home to Sanford Stadium to take on the Auburn Tigers. DraftKings lists Georgia as a 16.5-point favorite against Auburn. Georgia beat Auburn 20-10 last season after falling behind 10-0 early in the game.
Georgia’s game against Florida on Oct. 31 has the Bulldogs as a 12.5-point favorite. Florida will be led by new coach Jon Sumrall as he replaces Billy Napier. This game will be played Atlanta, as the stadium in Jacksonville undergoes renovations.
The week after Georgia takes on Florida, the Bulldogs go on the road to face Ole Miss. Georgia is listed as a 4.5-point favorite. The Rebels ended Georgia’s season last year in the College Football Playoff. In 2024, Ole Miss pounded Georgia 24-10 in Oxford, Mississippi. Ole Miss will have a new coach this season in Pete Golding, as he takes over for Lane Kiffin.
In all five games listed by DraftKings, Georgia is a favorite. It would not come as a surprise to see Georgia listed as a favorite in every regular season game it plays next season.
A year after going 12-2 and winning the SEC, Georgia ranks inside the top-10 in returning snaps and returning starters for the upcoming season.
The Bulldogs bring back a number of star players, such as safety KJ Bolden and quarterback Gunner Stockton. While Georgia is young at a handful of positions, Georgia coach Kirby Smart exited spring practice feeling optimistic about what his team could accomplish this upcoming season.
“For the most part, I feel really good about it,” Smart said in an April radio interview. “We had a good spring. Got some guys coming back. Got some youthful spots that I worry about, but at the end of the day, you know, that’s what they pay you to do as a coach.
While gambling lines aren’t everything, the numbers from DraftKings only further highlight the confidence in Georgia entering next season.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) – How much is the special primary election going to cost the state?
Voters in U.S. House Districts 1, 2, 6 and 7 will have the opportunity to vote for their congressperson on Aug. 11.
The monetary cost for the state was estimated with the introduction of the special legislative session’s House Bill 1, which called for the special primary election in the four congressional districts.
According to the bill’s fiscal note, it will cost the state an estimated $4.45 million over fiscal years 2026 and 2027 to “reimburse the counties that comprise the 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 7th U.S. Congressional Districts for election expenses.”
“Yes, we do have an election going on, and all elections are important because you’re electing people who are making decisions over your life in one way, shape, or form,” said Judge JC Love, probate judge for Montgomery County.
Judge Love said the price tag of elections covers the logistics behind the ballot box, such as the cost of absentee elections, the training of poll workers, paying them on election day, preparing the ballots and moving necessary equipment.
“All of our election officials are working as hard as we can to go ahead and make sure that you’ll be able to go in and vote in your respective races on August 11th as well as on June 16th,” said Judge Love.
June 16 is the runoff day for statewide offices: U.S. Senate, agriculture commissioner, attorney general and lieutenant governor.
The Aug. 11 election is the special primary election for U.S. House Districts 1, 2, 6 and 7.
The deadline to register for the Aug. 11 primary is July 27.
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Copyright 2026 WSFA. All rights reserved.
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