Alabama voters overwhelmingly supported an amendment to the state’s 1901 Constitution authorizing public displays of the Ten Commandments.

“The people we were hearing from are super excited to have this opportunity to go down in history as the first state to acknowledged that we want God, that is the Christian God, in their Constitution,” said Dean Young, the chief advocate for the amendment and the campaign strategist last year for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. “This is the first time in the history of the country that a state has taken such a stand in acknowledging the God of the Old and New Testament.”

As the votes continue to come in tonight in Alabama, no measure nor state candidate is winning by a wider margin than the Ten Commandments, as more than 7 out of 10 voters backed the measure.

With almost all precincts counted, 71.6 percent of voters approved of the constitutional amendment while 28.4 percent disapproved.

“This is a big deal. It’s a huge deal,” said Young, before the polls closed earlier Tuesday. “The highest levels across the nation in government are watching what Alabama is doing.”

Young said he was confident the passage will lead to public displays of the Ten Commandments, even if national organizations which advocate for a separation of church and state are already promising legal challenges.

“This (Ten Commandments) ballot initiative, aimed at driving particular voters to the polls, was pure exploitation of religion for political purposes," said Rachel Laser, president and CEO with the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Government sponsored religious displays on public property clearly violate the core constitutional principle of religious freedom and put the seal of approval on one religion over another. And many of these displays will no doubt end up in court at the expense of the taxpayers.”

The ACLU of Alabama, in a statement, said they were not surprised with the passage of the constitutional amendment, “even though from a legal standpoint, it is meaningless.”

They also called the potential displays a violation of the U.S. Constitution, and that Tuesday’s passage will give public officials “false comfort that they will be safe from costly litigation.”

The amendment, as written, promises that no state money will be used to defend it during legal challenges. But Young predicted that Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who won Tuesday’s governor’s election over Democrat Walt Maddox, will do everything “within all of her available power and that includes executive orders” to ensure that the Ten Commandments are displayed in public venues within 90 days.

Young, during a news conference last month in Montgomery, said Ivey committed in a questionnaire to putting the Ten Commandments on display inside every one of Alabama’s public schools. Ivey’s campaign, at the time, did not acknowledge making such commitment. But the governor has repeatedly cited her support for the displays.

“When the governor of your state is requesting the schools place the Ten Commandments on the walls and the people of the state are saying overwhelmingly that they want the Ten Commandments in the schools, then we won’t have too much of a problem (in getting them displayed),” said Young, who is from Orange Beach. “The people who work with the schools, they are excited about the opportunity.”

Young and state Senator Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, have also said there are Christian organizations willing to defend public entities which display them.

The ACLU, in its statement, added, “Local public bodies, such as school districts, will be forced to hire lawyers to defend lawsuits challenging specific Ten Commandment displays. And, should the plaintiffs prevail, the local public body and its taxpayers will be on the hook for the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees, which could run easily into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The amendment is a trap for the unwary.”

Young, a campaign strategist for 2017 Senate nominee Roy Moore, said he’s been working on passage of such an amendment for the past 16 years.

Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, gained national notoriety in the 1990s and early 2000s for his attempts at getting the Ten Commandments displayed on public property. His most famous effort occurred in 2001, after he was elected as chief justice, when he had a 5,200-pound Ten Commandments monument installed inside the Helflin-Torbert Judicial Building in Montgomery. It was removed in 2004, following a federal lawsuit, and now is located inside the Church at Wills Creek in Gadsden.