A Closer Look At Alabama’s Driver License Office Closures

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the outrage over Alabama’s closure of 31 driver license offices in 30 of its counties, but Bob Somerby says the prevailing liberal wisdom is a crock. The story is that Alabama closed offices in predominantly black counties as a way of making it harder for blacks to get driver licenses and thus making it harder for them to vote. (Alabama, naturally, has a photo ID requirement to vote.) But is that true?

Well, at great expense, the hardworking staff here totted up the black population of all 30 counties with closed offices. Here are the numbers:

  • Total population: 826,000
  • Total black population: 196,000
  • Percentage black population: 23.8%

For Alabama as a whole, the population is 26.2 percent black. So it looks like Somerby is right. The black population of the affected counties is actually lower than it is for the whole state. If Alabama was deliberately trying to target blacks, they sure seem to have made a hash of it.

Data here.

POSTSCRIPT: There are other criticisms you can make, of course. Closing offices in small rural counties—many of which are majority black—makes it really hard to get a driver license since the nearest open office might be quite far away. At the same time, closing offices in places with very few people is also obviously sensible just in terms of constituent service. In any case, the overall impact doesn’t appear to be much heavier—if at all—on blacks than it is on whites.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate