The Alabama House is scheduled today to consider a bill to make it a felony to assist another person with an absentee ballot or an absentee ballot application.

Democrats oppose the bill and tried this morning to move it to the bottom of today’s agenda but were voted down.

Under the bill, family members and certain election officials would still be allowed to help with a ballot or application. And people would be allowed to help a voter who is blind, disabled, or unable to read and write at that voter’s request.

But otherwise, it would be illegal for a person “to knowingly distribute, order, request, collect, prefill, obtain, or deliver an absentee ballot application or absentee ballot in addition to his or her own absentee ballot application or absentee ballot.”

The sponsor of the bill is Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellville. The House elections committee approved the bill two weeks ago after a public hearing that drew an overflow crowd and generated heated debate.

House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, questioned whether the bill was needed, saying he had heard of only a handful of cases of voter fraud that resulted in convictions.

“I just think that oftentimes we’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist,” Daniels said.

Kiel said a city council race in Russellville that was a tie vote was decided by a fraudulent ballot. “If you’re in one of those races and it affects you and there is one fraudulent vote, that’s way more than enough,” he said.

Rep. Mary Moore, D-Birmingham, said she helps people with voting, including those at her church. She said she remembers when her mother and father saved coins in a jar to pay their poll taxes. Moore said the bill would be a hardship on certain voters in all communities.

“They hurt poor whites,” Moore said. “They hurt whites with disabilities. Some of them can’t make it to the polls and vote. When you hurt me, you’re going to hurt your own folks with bills like this.”

Rep. Chip Brown, a Republican from Mobile County, spoke in favor of the bill, saying that secure elections were the “backbone of our great republic.”

Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, followed Brown and called Kiel’s bill possibly the worst he has ever seen. He said the bill would make it a felony for him to pay his son to pick up an absentee ballot application.

“Your bill equates me paying my son to go get an absentee ballot for me, to robbery 2nd (degree),” England told Kiel. England said the exception in the bill for family members did not apply to a provision prohibiting paying a third party for help with an absentee ballot application or absentee ballot.

“It’s hard to celebrate democracy and be afraid of it at the same time,” England said.

Rep. Ginny Shaver, R-Leesburg, said she had experience helping administer elections and said absentee ballots are the form of voting most susceptible to fraud. Shaver said she had not seen fraud but had seen suspicious circumstances, such as a stack of absentee ballot applications filled out with the same handwriting.

“I appreciate you’re trying to shore up and prevent voter fraud in this area,” Shaver said.

Kiel said the bill spells out how voters who need assistance can request that help.

This story will be updated.