Monday Is Your Last Day to Register. Twice Last Week, He Voted No on Voter ID.

Wall of Shame — Today: Vulcan Materials

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Vulcan Materials PAC (Vestavia) has put $10,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account. Figures then voted no on cross-border energy infrastructure — the pipeline permitting and construction that drives demand for aggregates. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

TWICE IN ONE DAY

On Wednesday the House voted on two different bills, hours apart, on two subjects that have nothing to do with each other. A defense budget. A ban on members of Congress trading stocks.

Both of them carried the same rider: proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Congressman Shomari Figures voted against both.

Monday, July 27, is the last day anyone in this district can register to vote in the August 11 special primary.

NOW THE PART HIS OFFICE WILL SAY, AND WE ARE GOING TO SAY IT FIRST

He was not handed a clean vote on voter identification. He was handed two packages, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

On Tuesday the House adopted a rule, two hundred fourteen to two hundred eleven, that instructed the Clerk to staple the SAVE America Act onto the National Defense Authorization Act as it was being engrossed. That is a real thing that happened, and it is the reason most Democrats gave for voting no on a defense bill.

The stock trading bill got the same treatment. Republicans attached the Voter ID Act to it. Democrats also argued that the trading ban was written to cover members of Congress but not the President or Vice President.

So when his office says he was voting against a package and not against the provision, that is a fair description of the procedure. We would rather you hear it from us than read it in a mailer telling you we left it out.

WHY THAT ANSWER STILL DOES NOT GET HIM THERE

Here is the trouble with it.

Six Democrats read the same defense bill, saw the same rider, and voted yes anyway.

Thirteen Democrats read the same trading bill, saw the same rider, and voted yes anyway.

Every single Republican voted yes on the trading bill. Two hundred eighteen to nothing. Every Alabama Republican in the House — Aderholt, Moore, Palmer, Rogers, Strong — voted yes on the defense bill.

The rider was not an automatic no. It was a choice. Nineteen of his own colleagues, across the two bills, made the other one.

And notice what the two bills had in common. Not defense. Not ethics. The only thing they shared was asking people to prove they are citizens before registering to vote.

WHAT ELSE WAS IN THE ONE HE VOTED DOWN

The defense authorization he voted against passed by four votes. Two hundred sixteen to two hundred twelve. It funds the military for the coming year and carries a pay raise for the troops, reported in the range of five to seven percent.

It also funds the mission at Fort Rucker.

Sixty-four thousand acres in Dale County. The Army's Aviation Center of Excellence, where the Army trains its helicopter pilots. An analysis by the University of Alabama in Huntsville put its total economic impact near nine billion dollars a year and roughly twenty-nine thousand direct and indirect jobs, and called it the fifth largest employer in the state and the largest anywhere south of Montgomery. Those figures are from 2023 reporting, so treat them as the scale of the thing rather than this year's ledger.

A correction while we are here, because we would rather fix our own record than have it fixed for us. Saturday's brief called the post Fort Novosel. It carried that name from 2023 until 2025, when it was renamed Fort Rucker again, for Captain Edward W. Rucker, a World War One aviator. Fort Rucker is correct. We got it wrong on Saturday, and we have corrected it in the archive.

Ozark and Daleville sit on its edge. Whatever a voter thinks about riders and procedure, this is the largest employer in the southern half of Alabama, and it is in this district, and its authorization passed by four votes.

THERE IS NO DEMOCRATIC BALLOT HERE ON AUGUST 11

One more fact worth knowing before Monday.

Congressman Figures drew no primary opponent. An unopposed candidate does not appear on a special primary ballot. So there is no Democratic congressional contest in this district on August 11. There is nothing on that side to vote for.

Alabama does not register voters by party. The Attorney General has addressed this directly and concluded that any qualified voter may choose either party's ballot in the August election, and that taking a Republican ballot on August 11 after taking a Democratic one on May 19 is not prohibited crossover voting, because a special primary is not a runoff.

Which means every person in this district who wants a say in who represents them has exactly one ballot available to them on August 11. It is the Republican one. There is no runoff. A plurality wins it.

MONDAY

Register by Monday, July 27. You can do it online at the Secretary of State's site, or on paper at your county Board of Registrars.

If you are voting absentee: your application has to reach your county Absentee Election Manager by August 4 if you mail it, or August 6 if you hand it in. A hand-delivered ballot has to be back in that office by five o'clock on August 10. A mailed one has to arrive by noon on August 11. Alabama requires a reason to vote absentee, so check whether yours is on the list.

Polls are open seven in the morning to seven at night. Bring photo identification — which Alabama already requires, and has for years.

That is the whole point. The thing he voted against twice last Wednesday is a version of something this state already does, and asks you to do, on the eleventh of August.

Register by Monday.