Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen spoke on Thursday to the Republican Women of Trussville (RWOT) at the Trussville Civic Center.
Allen said that he was sworn in as Alabama’s Secretary of State in January and that both of his two children are now in college.
“It has been a big year,” Allen said. “We have got both kids out of the house. It is an adjustment when the kids move out.”
“I was born and raised in Tuscaloosa County at the end of a dirt road,” Allen said.
From 2018 to 2022, Allen represented Pike County in the Alabama House of Representatives.
The group applauded him for sponsoring legislation forbidding doctors from performing gender-altering procedures and treatments on children.
“I introduced the House legislation, but the man in the back of the room, (State Senator) Shay Shelnutt, was the man in the Senate,” Allen said. “It took us three years to get it passed.”
Shelnutt said, “It should not have taken that long.”
“Those procedures, no matter what they tell you, is not reversible,” Allen continued.
“It is tied up in federal court,” Allen said. “We will see how that progresses.”
RWOT President Terri LaPoint praised the group for their door-knocking to help elect Mike Bolin to the Jefferson County Commission in a recent special election, thus maintaining a 3 to 2 Republican control of the Commission.
“Mile Bolin’s win – that was a huge race,” Allen said. “Door knocking makes a big difference.
“The best thing we can do is elect conservative people at the local level,” Allen said. “Mike Bolin – it is important to elect conservatives at the county commission level, at the city council level, at the school board level. We have seen how important it is to have conservatives on the library board.
Prior to his service in the legislature, Allen was the Probate Judge of Pike County.
Allen said his experience as a probate judge helped prepare him to be Secretary of State.
“They are our customers,” Allen said of persons coming to their office. “We may not have the government service they want, but they are looking for help. It is our duty as public officials to help them with their problem.”
Sometimes the people who came to the Pike County Probate Judge’s office were not in the right office.
“Whether or not we could help their problem, we wanted to get them to the right place,” Allen explained. “I take that philosophy with me to the Secretary of State’s office.”
“The Secretary of State’s office has 40 employees,” Allen explained. “35 are merit-based. They are here from administration to administration. We have some that are political appointees – the executive staff: Chief of staff, legal counsel, deputy legal counsel, director of legislative affairs, that sort of things.”
“We have had a lot of speaking requests,” Allen said. His focus has been on doing the job and “getting things done” in his first six months on the job. “We are now moving around a little more. It is a pleasure to be here.”
Allen said that his office recently became aware of a scam using the name of the Alabama Secretary of State’s office.
“We are working closely with the Securities Exchange Commission to make sure they don’t get any kind of money, no matter how small,” Allen said.
Allen said that he does not court attention and just does his job.
“I shouldn’t be running over people to get in front of a camera,” Allen said.
Allen said it is important for him to get out into communities and explained that he schedules two or three meetings in towns that he visits to get the pulse of that community.
“We want to make sure that we are not so connected in Montgomery that we forget what is happening in Trussville or what is happening in Moulton,” Allen said.
“We are fighting fraud in the election side as well,” Allen said. “As a former probate judge, I know what it is like to be at the courthouse at 5:30 on election day, and I know what it is to be the last person to walk out of the courthouse and lock the doors.”
“There will be a lot of eyeballs on these secretary of states offices next year,” Allen said. “We are already making preparation for 2024.”
“We had illegal immigrants who were stealing IDs in North Alabama,” Allen said. “They were even voting in local elections.”
“We removed a board of registrar for registering people who did not live at the location where she registered them,” Allen said. “We removed her. We are not a prosecuting agency, so we turned it over to the local DA in Houston County.”
“It all starts in the Board of Registrars offices,” Allen said. “They do a wonderful job, but we had this one person we needed to remove.”
“The more I learned about ERIC and studied it, it was really a data mining operation,” Allen said of his controversial decision to withdraw from the ERIC system for managing the voter rolls.
“It has been like eight states that have followed our lead,” Allen said. “I cannot talk about the Alabama whole plan that we are putting out yet, but I think you will be proud of what we come up with.”
Allen said that in his legislative agenda, “We wanted to solidify our election process.”
“It doesn’t take Alabama weeks to count ballots like you have seen across the country,” Allen said. “With the help of Shay Shelnutt, we are always going to have a paper ballot to vote on even after I am gone. Matt Simpson carried it in the house.”
“You will always vote on paper ballots in Alabama,” Allen said. “A great piece of legislation. It is common sense.”
Allen said that Sen. Clyde Chamblis and Simpson carried his legislation “to make sure that our tabulators cannot be connected to the internet.”
The legislature also passed his legislation for a poll worker pay increase. That bill was carried by Rep. James Lomax and Sen. Sam Givhan.
“We have partnered with the Alabama State Bar so that attorneys can get their CLA credit by working as a poll worker,” Allen said. The program is called Lawyers for Liberty.
The legislature also passed a bill to cuts the number of copies of acts from each session down from ten sets to five sets.
“The idea came from one of our employees,” Allen said. “We got that to Rep. Lomax and Sen. (Jay) Hovey to handle that. Thank you to Governor Ivey for getting that signed into law.”
“The ballot harvesting bill failed to our disappointment,” Allen said. “I don’t think ballot harvesting should be on your resume.”
“When we see fraud, we see it in the absentee process,” Allen explained. “That bill is a strong bill. We have got to protect the absentee process, but we can strengthen it with this bill. Garlan Gudger is going to carry it in the Senate.”
Shelnutt said, “You can say the truth. It was the Senate’s fault. We were weak.”
“To clarify, Shay Shelnutt was not weak. The Senate was weak,” Allen said,
“It is an unbelievable experience, for a boy who grew up on a dirt road to go to the capital each day in Montgomery as your Secretary of State,” Allen said.
“I believe in election day and not election month,” Allen said. “There are some out there that want policies that will lead to election chaos and confusion.”
“The people in Alabama are thirsting for leadership, men, and women of character who will do the right thing and not blow in the wind,” Allen said.
Among the group, a number of people expressed concern about the vote tabulating machines used in elections.
“I don’t think that is a concern in our state with the tabulators,” Allen said.
One audience member asked Allen to support an audit of the 2024 election.
“There was an audit bill filed late in the session,” Allen said. “We will be working with the sponsor on that. Anything that can strengthen what we do, I am all for it.”
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email brandonmreporter@gmail.com.
