Closing Driver’s License Offices in Alabama

Alabama is plan­ning to close 31 of its part-time driver’s license issu­ing offices across the state, citing budget cuts. The state currently requires that voters present one of a narrow list of photo iden­ti­fic­a­tion docu­ments in order to vote, such as a driver’s license or a govern­ment employee ID card. As of 2014 an estim­ated 250,000 to 500,000 Alabami­ans lacked the specific ID required to vote.

The Bren­nan Center will be analyz­ing the impact of this change, but in the mean­time, this map[1] illus­trates how many of the clos­ing offices are located in areas with Alabama’s highest concen­tra­tions of African Amer­ic­ans:

The prelim­in­ary analysis suggests that the license office clos­ures are largely concen­trated in and around the “black belt, ” the portion of the state where the propor­tion of the popu­la­tion that is African Amer­ican is highest.

Here are some facts about the clos­ure of the license offices:[2]

• 26.3 percent of the total Alabama popu­la­tion is African Amer­ican.
• Currently, in 11 Alabama counties, African Amer­ic­ans comprise more than 50 percent of the popu­la­tion. Driver’s license offices will close in eight of these counties, [3] which will leave only three major­ity-African Amer­ican counties[4] with a driver’s license office.
• Under Alabama’s plan, license-issu­ing offices will close in all six of counties[5] in which African Amer­ic­ans comprise over 70 percent of the popu­la­tion.
• Conversely, 40 license-issu­ing offices will remain open in the 55 Alabama counties in which whites comprise more than 50 percent of the popu­la­tion.
• In 2012, the Bren­nan Center repor­ted that 32 percent of Alabama’s voting-age popu­la­tion lived more than 10 miles away from the nearest license issu­ing office that was open more than two days per week.