Alabama voting officials have put unfair hurdles in the way of students from Madison County’s two predominantly black universities who want to vote in Tuesday’s election, county officials said this week.

Students registered to vote in good faith, those officials said, but will encounter unexpected road blocks when they go to the polls on Tuesday.

“It’s voter suppression, and it gives our county a black eye,” the county’s top voting official, Madison County Probate Judge Tommy Ragland, said Wednesday. “It’s unnecessary. It should not have happened. We’ve got to let people vote, and we’ve got to let new voters, especially young people, have a good experience.”

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference announced Wednesday night a press conference on Thursday to “expose voter suppression in Madison County.”

Ragland and Madison County Commissioner Roger Jones referred to the routine statewide practice of mailing voter I.D. cards to newly registered voters. The cards list information such as the voter’s address, tell the voter his or her polling place and the public office districts at that address. Voters are asked to check the cards for errors.

If the card can’t be delivered and is returned to the Board of Registrars by the U.S. Post Office, the voter goes on the “inactive” voter list, even if the person is a first-time enrollee whose application is only a few months old. He or she is denied a ballot at the polling place until filling out an updated identification form.

The voter can fill out the form, get back in line and cast a ballot on election day, but critics argue that the extra time involved could discourage voting, especially at a university where students have classes, work or other commitments.

“I think there are folks who may be inactive all over the state,” Brent Beal, an attorney in the Secretary of State’s office, said Wednesday. “I can’t give you an answer about how many of them are students.”

Both Alabama A&M University and Oakwood University, with predominantly African-American student bodies, have been the sites of multiple voter registration drives leading up to the next week’s mid-term election. Estimates are that more than 1,100 new voters enrolled at A&M and more than 800 signed up at Oakwood.

“They have just registered to vote and this is the first time they will be able to vote and then have to go through an ordeal when they go vote Tuesday, they’ll have to fill out paperwork like they’re registering again,” Madison County Commissioner Roger Jones said. “It’s suppressing their right to vote.”

Jones said he wrote an email Wednesday to Lynda Hairston, chair of the Madison County Board of Registrars, asking that the students declared inactive be restored to active status. Jones said he copied the office of Gov. Kay Ivey on the email.

Hairston defended the active/inactive practice.

“If that card comes back, the mail has been returned by the Post Office,” Hairston said. “We make them ‘inactive/ID card undeliverable’ and when they go to vote, we question them. Do you still live there? If they do and the Post Office – the Post Office, not me – made a mistake, they can fill out an updated form and will put them back active and send them another card.”

“That does not disqualify you,” Hairston said. “All you need to do is update your address.”

“When she sent a card out to them, the address at the university, they didn’t claim that card,” Jones said. “It was sent back to Lynda and she took it upon herself since they didn’t claim the card to take them off the voter list.”

Students at Alabama A&M do not have post office boxes at the campus post office but receive mail to a general delivery address. Larry Abernathy, who runs the university post office, said Monday that A&M sent out several emails to students urging them to pick up their voter cards. But Abernathy said he still has several hundred unclaimed voter cards to return to Hairston if they are not claimed by election day.

“I have talked to our attorney,” Jones said referring to the county’s attorney, Jeff Rich, “and according to our attorney, she’s not within the law to do what she did. I was told that she said she’s been doing it this way for a long time. But I don’t care if it is. If it’s not within the law, it’s not right.”

Rich did not respond to a message left on his cell phone Thursday by AL.com.

Hairston did say that if the application is filled out incorrectly, for example, wrong date of birth, no driver’s license number or last four digits of their Social Security number, “I can’t accept it. Or if they don’t mark that they are a U.S. citizen, I can’t do that.”

Beal said the Secretary of State’s office, which is responsible for administering elections in Alabama, has provided additional “update” forms to Madison County that “inactive” voters can fill out and still vote.

“And my understanding is those are going to be disseminated to a lot of folks prior to them even going to the polls so they won’t have to fill them out when they get there,” Beal said. “They can just turn them in.”

Asked his reaction to hearing the phrase “voter suppression,” which critics used to described the situation, Beal said the Secretary of State’s office follows the same process statewide with “the intention to help the voters get the right address on file. We want to help voters. That’s all we are trying to do. We are trying to make sure their record is as accurate as possible to help them.”

But former Madison County Democratic Party Chairman Tom Ryan remains skeptical.

“They’ve done this before,” Ryan said. “They did this in the last election, too. The Board of Registrars said they used the wrong address and there were hundreds who were disenfranchised at that point.

“It’s always kind of coincidental, isn’t it, that it’s students and students of color who are always kicked off the rolls for some reason or another,” Ryan said.

Hairston said voters make all kinds of errors in their applications. But when the Post Office sends a registration card based on that application back to her as undeliverable, she said, there is a problem that may have to wait until election day.