Trump-backed candidate for Alabama lieutenant governor haunted by use of invalid voter ID

If one is going to base an antidemocratic crusade against purported voter fraud on a conspiracy theory, the least one could do is keep one’s own voting record squeaky-clean. And vice versa: If there are any questions that might come up about one’s own voting record, it goes without saying that one probably shouldn’t attempt to lead such a crusade.

Enter former Alabama GOP chairman John Wahl, who stepped down last week after being endorsed by Donald Trump in the state’s Republican primary for lieutenant governor. For years, Wahl led Alabama’s GOP, fixated on bogus allegations of voter fraud by liberals, while simultaneously claiming that an ID he made for himself and admits to using to vote was valid.

Concerns about the validity of Wahl’s ID were renewed this weekend when another primary challenger, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, posted a video to Facebook accusing Wahl of having voted with a “homemade fake ID.”

The story centers on reporting in 2022 from AL.com that Wahl was permitted to vote in 2020 using an ID card he made himself, which he said had been “authorized” by the state auditor, Jim Zeigler, so that Wahl could work as a volunteer on the office’s reputedly understaffed media team. Ziegler repeated to the Alabama Daily News this week that he “approved the ID as State Auditor, and it was professionally printed by a vendor — not homemade.”

But that didn’t answer all of the lingering questions. The Republican secretary of state told Newsweek in 2022 that Wahl’s card, which refers to him as a “regional press secretary” for the auditor’s office, didn’t meet the state’s voter ID standards.

That’s the context for Allen’s claims, which he obviously has an incentive to push at the moment — though that in and of itself doesn’t invalidate his concerns. Wahl denied the allegation that his ID didn’t pass muster, telling AL.com on Sunday that the secretary of state’s claims amount to “campaign lies.”

This story is not likely to go away — especially not if Wahl is nominated and continues the GOP’s quest to stoke fears about widespread voter fraud to curtail voters’ access to the polls.

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