Alabama Votes portal

Last week Secretary of State (SoS) Beth Chapman unveiled a new portal for Alabama voters – Alabamavotes.gov.  The site brings together information for Voters, Candidates, and PACS – most of which is available on the Secretary of State’s web site, but which isn’t as easy to navigate.

Included is information on voter registration, absentee voting, and more – the site even directs you to another SoS initiatve to stop voter fraud.  A chart of ‘Minimum Qualifications for Public Office‘ is available – did you know that in order to represent Alabama in the U.S. Senate, one needs to be a registered voter 30 years or older, who’s lived in the state for 1 day, and been a resident of the U.S. for 9 years?

I am most excited about the new ‘myinfo‘ section of the site.  As a registered voter, I can enter my name and birth date, and i can find out where my polling place is and in which districts i reside.  There’s also a feature that allows users to search for provisional ballots for many elections – but that search requires a PIN, which I could figure out how to obtain. (Most of the contact information listed seemed to be a phone number or mailing address – not an email address or form.)

This is definitely a work in progress – for example, the Frequently Asked Questions and Sample Ballot pages are still under development.  However, I think it’s a huge step forward, and I can’t wait to see what other features will be unveiled on the site.

Encyclopedia of Alabama

Yesterday Governor Riley officially launched the Encyclopedia of Alabama, a “free, online reference resource on Alabama’s history, culture, geography, and natural environment” developed through a partnership between the Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University.

The Encyclopedia can be searched, or browsed by subjects such as Business and Industry, Government and Politics, and Peoples of Alabama.  In addition to articles written by experts across the state, there are also lists of additional references and  links to other Web sources – for example, the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the Alabama Poverty Project, and Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform.

The site also includes a Places Index, glossary, quick facts section, and photo galleries (including one of Barbecue, Alabama Style).  A section for teachers is currently under development.

Constitution Day 2008

September 17th has been designated Constitution Day by the U.S. Congress. To commemorate Constitution Day, the University of Alabama is hosting free movie nights on the 17th and 18th. The College of Arts and Sciences is hosting the events – on the 17th, All the President’s Men will be shown; on the 18th, The Candidate. The films will be shown at 7 pm in 208 Gordon Palmer Hall.

Other resources available for Constitution Day can be found at:

- the National Archives – Charters of Freedom
- the Alabama Department of Archives and History has prepared some primary documents on the poll tax, in recognition of Constitution Day 2008.
- Peggy Garvin, in her Government Domain column, has a nice round-up of various Constitution Day resources
- Starr Hoffman, guest blogging for FGI, also has a good round-up of Constitution Day activities
- the Library of Congress has some teacher resources available.

National Voter Registration Month

Yesterday, Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman issued a news release declaring September to be National Voter Registration Month. The news release helpfully provides information about registering to vote in the state of Alabama, including the deadline for registering in order to vote in the November 4th General Election – October 24th. The release also includes the legal requirements to vote in Alabama, which are:

• The voter must be a United States Citizen,
• The voter must reside in Alabama,
• The voter must be at least 18 years old,
• The voter has not been convicted of a disqualifying felony (or have rights restored),
• And the voter has not been legally declared “mentally incompetent” by a court.

More information on voter registration, including an application, is available from the Secretary of State’s web site.  We also have voter registration cards in the Gorgas Library Government Documents Reading Room.