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By Sym Posey | The Birmingham Times
For some people, voting is a routine part of life. They register, find their polling place, cast a ballot and move on.
For others, the path back to the ballot box can be far more complicated. A felony conviction. A misunderstanding about Alabama’s voting laws. A name removed from the voter rolls. Years spent believing a right had been permanently taken away.
And sometimes, all it takes to change that is a conversation.
That conversation is happening across Birmingham and throughout Alabama through the work of volunteers with the League of Women Voters of Alabama (LWVAL) and its local leagues.
The League describes itself as a nonpartisan, grassroots organization working to protect and expand voting rights, build grassroots power, drive policy change and ensure Alabamians are represented in democracy. Its work includes voter education, advocacy, litigation and organizing.
But for the women doing the work on the ground, the mission can be much more personal. It can look like sitting at a table at the Birmingham Central Station and helping someone determine whether they can vote. It can mean explaining to someone with a felony conviction that they never actually lost their voting rights. It can mean helping another person navigate the process of getting those rights restored. And sometimes, it means accompanying someone to the polls after decades of believing they would never have the opportunity to vote again.
For Julie Reese, current president of the League of Women Voters of Greater Birmingham, the work has become more than civic engagement.
“It’s the most spiritual work I’ve ever done,” Reese said.
That sentiment captures the heart of a group of women who have made voting rights restoration and voter education part of their volunteer lives.
Alongside Reese are Vice President Donna Reynolds, longtime volunteer Dana Ellis, attorney and volunteer Stephanie Schmidt and Dori Miles, co-founder of Return My Vote, a nonprofit focused almost exclusively on voting rights restoration.
Though their backgrounds differ, they have found common ground in a simple belief: people cannot exercise a right they do not know they have.
A right many believe they lost
This work grew out of a complicated history surrounding voting rights and felony convictions in Alabama. Alabama’s Constitution declares that people convicted of crimes considered to involve “moral turpitude” could lose their voting rights. But determining which convictions fell under that category was not always consistent.
According to Ellis, for years, individual counties made their own determinations about which felonies affected a person’s right to vote. The situation changed in 2017, when Alabama passed legislation defining the crimes of moral turpitude that could affect voting rights statewide. That law helped establish greater consistency, but another problem remained: many Alabamians simply did not know what the law meant for them.
Ellis became involved around 2017, initially volunteering with the Southern Poverty Law Center before joining the League’s voter rights restoration efforts. She said one of the biggest challenges she encountered was the lack of public education surrounding the law.
“Someone might have a felony conviction and think they can’t vote,” Ellis explained.
But that does not necessarily mean they are disenfranchised.
She offered a recent example of a young man she met who believed he could not vote because of a felony drug possession conviction. Ellis told him he was eligible.
He began filling out a voter registration form, but something prompted Ellis to ask whether he had been registered before his conviction. He had. She checked his voter record and discovered that his registration was still active. His first reaction was excitement. His second was regret. He had missed elections because he believed he could not vote.
For Ellis, that moment illustrates why education is at the center of the League’s work.
“There are tons of convictions that never take somebody’s rights away,” she said, “but people believe that any felony conviction takes their rights away.”
That misconception can effectively disenfranchise someone even when the law says otherwise.
The League of Women Voters of Alabama (LWVAL) describes itself as a nonpartisan, grassroots organization working to protect and expand voting rights, build grassroots power, drive policy change and ensure Alabamians are represented in democracy. (Provided)Restoration is personal
The League’s work does not end with telling people whether they can vote.
For those who have lost their voting rights, volunteers help them understand what steps may be necessary to regain them.
The process depends on the conviction. Ellis explained that some convictions permanently remove voting rights, while others require a person to obtain a pardon. Still others can affect voting eligibility until a person completes their sentence, including probation and parole, and satisfies certain financial obligations connected to the conviction.
For people who can pay those obligations, the path back to voting may be more manageable. For those who do not, the process can become another barrier.
Ellis described the financial requirements as resembling a poll tax. Two people can have the same conviction, she said, but one may come from a family with enough money to satisfy the requirements while another cannot.
“That doesn’t make any sense to me personally that that’s a requirement,” Ellis said.
That frustration is shared by the volunteers who regularly meet people trying to navigate the system.
Schmidt, who retired from practicing law in 2021, joined the work because she wanted to volunteer with organizations addressing the issues she considered important.
She was introduced to the voting rights restoration work through a friend connected to Greater Birmingham Ministries. Later, her admiration for Reese and Ellis helped lead her to join the League.
For Schmidt, some of the most rewarding moments happen when she tells someone that the right they believed was gone may still belong to them.
“It’s so gratifying to talk to people who believe that they can’t vote,” Schmidt said, “and then you explain and tell them that in many cases, they’ve never lost their right to vote.”
That personal connection is what keeps her involved.
From one volunteer effort to a growing network
Reese joined the League in 2020. Her mother had previously been involved with the organization. Still, Reese said it was witnessing the racial justice movement following the killing of George Floyd that pushed her to action.
“I can’t just sit here anymore,” Reese remembers thinking. “I need to do something.”
Soon after joining, she became involved in the voting rights restoration effort Ellis and others were developing.
Reese remembers Ellis recounting a statement from the Alabama secretary of state indicating that the state would not spend taxpayer money educating people with felony convictions about their voting rights. The League, Reese said, would. That became a kind of rallying cry.
What began as a small effort has grown into a network of volunteers working in communities throughout the Birmingham area. The local effort includes the women featured in this story, along with several other volunteers.
They go where they are invited — and sometimes where people may be least likely to seek out traditional voter information. They visit drug court. They visit the Birmingham Central Station. They visit the Lovelady Center. They visit community corrections. They participate in expungement clinics, second-chance job fairs and other community events. In April alone, the group participated in 12 events, according to Ellis.
And “helping” does not always mean registering a person who has never voted. Sometimes it means helping someone verify their existing registration. Sometimes it means explaining that a conviction does not prevent them from voting.
Sometimes it means helping someone begin the restoration process. And sometimes it simply means answering a question.
That makes measuring the group’s impact difficult. Ellis maintains a spreadsheet tracking people assisted through the Greater Birmingham effort, but the numbers do not capture every interaction. Reese said she thinks of the League less as a registration organization and more as an education organization.
People may walk up to a League table and simply receive a card reminding them to check their registration or polling place. That interaction may never make it into a spreadsheet. Still, Ellis estimates the Greater Birmingham effort has reached more than 1,000 people through its various activities, while emphasizing that her spreadsheet represents only a portion of the work.
People can visit LWVAL.org, contact Return My Vote, or call or text (205) 871-8194 for assistance. (Adobe Stock)The stories that stay with them
Numbers can demonstrate reach. Stories demonstrate impact. For Reese, one of the most memorable moments happened during a phone bank, when volunteers contacted people whom they had previously registered to remind them about their polling locations and election information.
One man asked her to wait while he pulled his vehicle off the road so he could write down the information. After Reese gave him his polling location, he responded with a sentence she has never forgotten: “Young lady, you have restored me to society.”
Reese nearly cried.
Another story came from Miles, who recalled a man whose family placed a high value on voting. After a felony conviction caused him to lose his voting rights, he began taking other people’s “I Voted” stickers on Election Day and placing them on his chest.
It was, Miles said, his way of coping with feeling excluded from something his family considered important.
For another man, the stakes were even more profound. After spending nearly four decades in prison, the man was released at about 79 or 80 years old. One of the things he wanted most before he died was to vote. The volunteers helped him restore his voting rights. Because of mobility issues, they have also helped transport him to the polls.
He has since voted in the last two elections — including the May 19 primary and Birmingham’s municipal election.
For Reynolds, who serves as the League’s vice president, these stories carry a particular weight. She joined the League in 2019 after hearing about people being removed from voter rolls and learning more about mass incarceration and felony disenfranchisement.
Reynolds grew up during the 1950s and 1960s, before the Voting Rights Act was passed.
She remembers a time when Black Americans faced barriers to voting and representation. So when she saw people losing access to the ballot, she felt compelled to act.
“I just said, I’ve got to do something,” Reynolds said.
When the ballot box becomes a battleground
The League’s work extends beyond individual voters. LWVAL also engages in advocacy and litigation when it believes voting rights are threatened. That role became particularly visible in 2024.
In August of that year, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen announced a program targeting more than 3,000 registered voters who had previously been issued noncitizen identification numbers. The problem was that having once held such an identification number did not mean someone remained a noncitizen; naturalized citizens could have previously held those numbers before becoming U.S. citizens.
LWVAL joined the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice and Alabama NAACP in challenging the purge.
A federal judge halted the program before the 2024 general election, ruling that Alabama could not systematically remove voters from the rolls during the federal law’s 90-day quiet period. The case was ultimately dismissed in March 2025 after the state agreed to end the program.
For the League, the episode demonstrated why voter protection requires more than simply encouraging people to register. Someone can register and still face a threat to their ability to cast a ballot. That is why the organization describes its work broadly—education, advocacy, litigation and organizing — not merely registration.
The work inside Alabama’s prisons
Miles said another often-overlooked issue is that some people incarcerated in Alabama remain eligible to vote. Yet knowing that is only the beginning.
Eligible incarcerated voters generally must vote by absentee ballot, and the process can be difficult to navigate even under ordinary circumstances. Inside a prison, the barriers can be even greater.
“There are absolutely zero resources provided to people in prison to assist with that process,” Miles said.
She described Alabama’s absentee process as complicated, involving multiple envelopes, witnesses and deadlines.
For someone behind bars, meeting those requirements can be especially difficult.
For Miles, the question is larger than paperwork.
“If we’re really living in a democratic society,” she said, “those are things that need to change so that everybody who’s eligible can participate.”
That principle is central to the League’s mission: eligibility should mean something in practice, not simply on paper.
A mistake shouldn’t erase a voice
Reynolds thinks about the people she meets who committed crimes when they were young, served their sentences and then spent decades trying to rebuild their lives.
She has visited prisons and seen people who were incarcerated when they were young men and women and later returned to society.
They got jobs. They built families. They became older. But some continued believing that a mistake made decades earlier meant they would never again have a voice at the ballot box.
“To me, it bothers me that if you do something when you’re young,” Reynolds said, “and you serve your time and get out and get a job and try to get back into society, you want to hold this one thing over them for the rest of their lives.”
That is the gap the volunteers are trying to close.
Not simply the gap between a person and a ballot. The gap between a person and their understanding of their own citizenship. Reese described that disconnect as almost dehumanizing. A person may still work, pay taxes and participate in their community, she said, yet feel stripped of a fundamental part of citizenship if they cannot vote.
“It’s almost a dehumanizing type thing here in the state where you’re less than other people who have not been through this terrible situation,” Reese said.
For her, that is what makes the work difficult. It is also what makes it necessary.
A call, a text and a chance to find out
The League’s newest emphasis is making information easier to access. The organization has created a voting rights restoration landing page through its website, while Return My Vote provides another avenue for people seeking help specifically with restoration.
The League recognizes that not everyone has reliable internet access or feels comfortable navigating websites. So the goal is to create multiple entry points.
People can visit LWVAL.org, contact Return My Vote, or call or text 205-871-8194 for assistance.
The organization also welcomes volunteers. Those interested can be trained to assist at community tables and events.
University of Alabama students have also participated as interns.
For the women already doing the work, bringing more people into the effort is part of ensuring it continues.
More than a voter registration table
There is an image many people may associate with the League of Women Voters: volunteers sitting behind a table, handing out voter registration forms. That image is not wrong. It is simply incomplete.
The work happening in Birmingham and across Alabama has grown into something broader. It is registration, education, restoration, advocacy, and litigation. It is showing up at a bus station. It is going into communities where people may not know who to ask.
It is listening when someone says, “I don’t think I can vote.”
And then asking one more question: Why not?
Sometimes the answer is a conviction. Sometimes it is a paperwork issue. Sometimes it is misinformation. Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes the answer is that the person has carried an assumption for years that no one ever challenged.
That is where volunteers like Ellis, Reynolds, Schmidt, Reese and Miles step in.
They do not promise to solve every problem. They cannot erase every fee, conviction or bureaucratic barrier. They cannot guarantee that every person will regain the right to vote. What they can do is provide something that has been missing for too many people: accurate information.
And sometimes, accurate information changes everything.
For the League’s volunteers, the ultimate goal is not simply a larger registration list.
It is a more informed electorate — people who understand their rights, know how to exercise them and recognize that their voice still matters.
Because for someone who has spent years believing they have no voice, discovering that they do can feel like more than voting. It can feel like coming home.
