“If you want to manipulate the absentee ballot system in Alabama you can because the system is designed to let people vote, not to keep people from voting,” Davis said. “If there are people out there that want to skirt the system, if they want to use the system, it’s liberal enough, it’s open enough, that they can, and that’s happened in Russell County many times.”

The 2008 city and county elections both prompted criminal investigations into absentee voting irregularities, but a grand jury “no billed” the case and no charges were filed. In 2002, Nathaniel Gosha, a former county commissioner and City Council candidate, was convicted of 25 felonies and 12 misdemeanors in a scheme to sell absentee ballots.

“Of course, we don’t know how many are out there that we haven’t intercepted,” he said of the allegedly forged applications.