At the 71st Shoals Republican Club Meeting, AL State Auditor Andrew Sorrell Vision Casts the Future for the State
This political rising star projects greater things for the state of Alabama and its elections.
State Auditor Andrew Sorrell, his wife Hannah, and his daughters Liberty and Glory were the guests at the 71st monthly meeting of The Shoals Republican Club. In Sorrell’s address to the group, he lauded the solid conservative foundations established in Colbert County, discussed the 2025 legislative session, and cast a vision for the future of the state.
Sorrell discussed his humble beginnings in politics, and credited a combination of grassroots support and shoe leather to his successful campaigns. Sorrell began with the 2010 ballot initiative campaign on which he cut his political teeth. Through connecting with voters door-to-door, Sorrell helped change the trajectory of that vote.
“That's when I realized the power of campaigning,” Sorrell said. “It doesn't matter where the polling starts. If people are uninformed on the issues, you can actually change people's mind.”
In 2018, Sorrell did change people’s minds. As the Republican candidate for Alabama House District 3, he parlayed his formula of voter and social media engagement to successfully flip the Democrat-held seat. Sorrell did this with little name recognition, and no backing from influential Montgomery PACs.
“Montgomery doesn't get to pick your legislator, you do, and I've always appreciated that.”
For the campaign, Sorrell did what he had done before: knocked on doors in Colbert County and asked people to vote for him. The results were surprising, even to Sorrell.
“And election night rolls around, we get 77 percent. So, the next day, the speaker calls me, and goes, ‘What did you do up there? We did not see that coming.’ and I said, I did the one thing my opponent was unwilling to do: I went and asked people for their vote. And that's still important. You never want to assume you have people’s vote.”
According to Bama Politics, Sorrell “challenged a 28-year incumbent Democrat in a seat that had not been held by a Republican in 140 years.” This election win changed the trajectory of the politics in Northern Alabama, moving the counties of Colbert and Lauderdale firmly into the Republican column. Seven years later, with Reps. Ernie Yarbrough (District 7), Jamie Kiehl (District 18), Benjamin Harrison (District 2), Kerry “Bubba” Underwood (District 3), and Sen. Larry Stutts (District 6), Northern Alabama has remained reliably red.
“What are the odds of that 15 years ago? I could have never, ever imagined that little Colbert County would have such influence on the state party,” Sorrell said. “And I also want to say a good thing or two about our legislative delegation […] all the big issues our legislative delegation is on the right side of.”
Sorrell moved into his accomplishments as state auditor and some of the bills in the current legislative session which he had a hand in promoting: HB244, which restricts, among other things, using pronouns that do not align with a student’s biological sex, and HB209 which exempts nursing mothers from jury duty.
Sorrell highlighted his campaign promise to replace registrars who were not doing their jobs.
“This was not fun. You don't make friends by going in and replacing board registrars. However, I knew that there were some underperforming registrars,” Sorrell said. There were some who didn't know how to use a computer. There were some who weren't showing up to work. We had problems all over the state, including one person who was knowingly registering people to vote at addresses they did not live at. So, I thought you know what? I’m just going to clean house right out the gate.”
The integrity of registrars affects the integrity of elections, and Sorrell used this point to segue into the importance of election integrity.
“Our registrars are our last line of defense. On election integrity, we have to get people in there who are serious about keeping the voter rolls clean.”
Sorrell mentioned his pride in recommending Colbert County Registrar John Lackey for the Voter Registration Advisory Board. Lackey was chosen to be a part, and also chosen to chair it! Sorrell used this as a launch point to vision-cast about what he would like to see this board become to secure and maintain election integrity.
Sorrell first envisioned an expansion of this board.
“We're going to get some circuit clerks on there. We're going to get some probate judges, some sheriffs. We're going to get local election officials. We're going to have some Secretary of State appointments on there, and we're going to also talk about what we can do to strengthen our elections in Alabama.”
Sorrell also pinpointed the importance of involving “people who matter,” such as the county registrars, ordinary citizens, and even election integrity activists.
“Their input is valuable too,” Sorrell said, relating an anecdote which illustrated this. During ballot testing of vote-counting machines in the 67 counties, an activist in Lee County copied her absentee ballot and ran it through the machine to see if the machine would read it. Much to everyone’s surprise, the fraudulent ballot was counted.
“That's a problem, right? Now that problem has been resolved, because now our absentee ballots are coded differently,” Sorrell said. “That's good, but you know what? That might not have happened if she hadn't done that. It's important we involve people outside of government.”
Sorrell also envisioned expanding the Alabama Voter Integrity Database (AVID) to partner, compare, and coordinate on voter rolls with additional states, and to create a division for election integrity investigation within the Secretary of State’s office.
“The only job of these employees will have is going to be to investigate claims of voter. We're going to take those claims and turn them over to a local DA or the AG. We got hundreds of complaints in the Secretary of State's office, but they don't have the time to investigate.”
Sorrell ended his talk with reinforcing the importance of establishing mandatory election audits in Alabama. Currently the state does not require that elections be audited. Sorrell committed to reducing the cost of accessing state voter rolls. Sorrell alleged the fee costs are prohibitive to election integrity, preventing activists from properly vetting the integrity of the rolls.
Much of the powers in Sorrell’s plans fall under the role of the Secretary of State. So, does this mean he plans to run for a different office in 2026? Only time will tell. With Sorrell’s current track record of effectiveness and winning, it certainly cannot be discounted.
He's correct...ALL voters really need to be better informed. This is a problem on every level; city, county, state, federal. Great reporting! Thank you Jennifer!
Thank you, Jennifer. It's good to know someone is concerned about the ridiculous excessive charge Alabama inflicts on election integrity advocates when they would like to check on how well their government has been keeping clean voter rolls. Our current Secretary of State doesn't even acknowledge it as a problem. But Sorrell is still not engaged sufficiently to start making plans for election reform in Alabama. His notion that coding absentee ballots differently has solved a problem, proves the point. The design of the original paper ballot was not the problem that was revealed. So changing it to add coding to it will not solve the problem. The tabulator that accepted a standard-weight, office-supply, paper copy of a ballot and counted the votes on it, can be programmed to accept/reject any coding that is applied to an absentee ballot. The tabulator and the secretive coding it uses are the problem, not the paper. This is the problem with allowing the government we elect to run our elections. Our elections need MAJOR reform. They are not secure because we use computer-driven tabulators manufactured with components made in foreign countries and electronic poll books that are admittedly online. And there is no incentive for our government to get rid of them now that there is plenty of money flow due to their usage. They are not transparent, in part because they are not simple enough for the average voter to be able to understand, but also because no one knows who's counting the votes or how they're being counted. They are centrally controlled making them more vulnerable to massive manipulation. They are not auditable because we don't have good chain-of-custody procedures, and because our laws prevent any real audit, and always will, as long as our government can prevent it. There is no accountability because the same government that runs our elections, write the laws that might hold them accountable. MAJOR reform is needed that will put elections back where they always belonged, back under local control. People that let the government they elect control the elections they use to choose representation, get the representation they deserve.