FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Midday Mobile - Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen joins the show - August 30 2024
There will be no personal nor direct attacks on anyone. And I would ask that you please try to keep down the loud cheering and the clapping. There will be no booing and no unruly behavior with that. This is painful and it will be for a long time. Baby, that's right. This man knows what's up. After all, these are a couple of high-stepping turkeys. And you know what to say about a high stepper. No step too high for a high stepper. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. Well, Sean's a tough guy. I mean, I think everybody knows that. You know, Sean, he took some licks. He hangs in there. Yeah, what's wrong with the beer we got? I mean, the beer we got drink pretty good, don't it? Did you hear what I said? So this is a great council. I had no doubt about them. That doesn't suck. If you don't like it, you're bad. Last question. Were you high on drugs? Last question, kiss my ****. All right, put your mittens on your kittens and away we go. Mid-day mobile on this Friday. Hey, I'm Sean. Glad to have you all along. Next couple hours. Easy to get in touch here. Text line and the phone line, both at 3430106. 3430106. Coming up at around 1235. Got a lot of discussions over the last few weeks about the people that are here legally in the country, right, the green card work visas, but they found themselves on federal voting rolls, over 3,000 here in the state of Alabama. Secretary of State, West Allen, about a month ago, was on the show with me and talked about what he thought was happening, was digging into it. Since then, the information is out. He joins us again today at 1235. So more on that story that I know that has a lot of you all asking questions. You got a good chance today to ask Secretary of State. That's a little after the news at 1230. Also, T. Bruce McKinnon from Bay Business News going to join us in the one o'clock hour. An interesting guy. You hear his voice here on the radio station. We'll talk to him in person coming up at one o'clock. Also, it's football time. Like I needed to tell you that. I mean, I was desperate enough for college football that I watched Colorado and some of the drama about the Dion stuff, but I watched Colorado and North Dakota. The game that I don't think I ever have sat down to a Colorado and North Dakota football game, but I did last night. I needed it so badly. The Buffalo's versus the Bison, which I mean, they're talking about the same critter. Bison actually accurate, but in Western parlance, and a lot of people don't call them American Buffalo, right? We call it the Buffalo. We don't call it Bison technically, because they're not Buffalo. But who cares? It was Colorado Buffalo's versus the North Dakota state Bison. And I mean, I watched that game because that was that much in need. Speaking of football, of course, we are right here on the precipice of closing down the ticket office here on the college pick them, right? So you've got to be signed up for college pick them here with the radio station to win the fantastic prizes from Spring Hillways hardware. You got to be signed up by tomorrow before the game starts. I'd like to do it today. A bunch of y'all did it yesterday. The last of you stragglers go ahead and get in today. If you were in college pick them last year, just check your email for run your pool. Same thing I did. So I went to run your pool. And then when you go there, it'll you can go click in. If you forgot your password, let's you reset the password, and then you're back in to the FM Talk 1065 college pick them. If you're fresh and new to this, go to FMTalk165.com. If you'll see a tab along the top says college pick them. If you'll click that, there's a great, a great couple paragraphs there and links. So you just click here and click there and get signed up. No cost to you, but you can win fantastic prizes and you can talk trash the whole college football season long. So get signed up. Do it today. Tomorrow the before the game start is the absolute deadline. But we'd love for you to do it today. Also speaking of football today, the debut of my man, Joey Mason's tailgate giveaway, $100 gift certificate. One of y'all listening today is going to win. Make sure you have a phone nearby because you'll use that at some but not right now at some point today. You'll use the phone and I'll have a certain color, a number that you got to be and then you'll win the tailgate giveaway, a $100 gift certificate from Mason Hills Farm, where I get my steaks, where I get my burger, I get all kind of meats now, actually coming on Mason Hills Farm. You'll be able to win that $100 gift certificate and use that maybe for next weekend to have some great food on the grill. Come game time. All right, so I did not watch the duet interview as it aired on CNN because I told you I was locked into important things like the buffaloes versus the bison in the mix there. But I did watch it afterwards. Interesting to the way it gets repackaged. I was saying a little bit of that to Jeff poor earlier that they repackaged things. They get 18 minute interview, right? And you go to YouTube and you're searching for like CNN interview. And you have to like really dig to find the real interview. It's full of a whole bunch of people giving you their take. Like they'll play, you know, just a little bit of the answer take out. Maybe the question, make it seem better for the Harris campaign. I know y'all are all aware of that, but make sure people, you know, check things out. Say go look for the whole thing. Go look for the whole thing. We will play probably a third of the thing in this next 20 minutes or so. Maybe less than that, a quarter of the thing. But I encourage you to watch the whole thing. If you think I'm spinning it one way or another, then you can go ahead and listen. All right, to the whole thing. But some of the things that stood out to me in this interview, I do think Dana Bash did better than I expected. After seeing the assault she did on vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, I mean, her interview with Vance was crap. I was expecting, I'm expecting softball, I'm expecting wiffleball here, but I probably got softball in her interview here. But it wasn't as bad as it could be. She asked some, I think, questions that are of note. I will point out a couple of times she asked follow-up questions. And that's one of the things here is you can ask the initial question. It could be a good question. But you'll hear in some of these where either Kamala Harris or Tim Bowles, they spin it, and that's normal. Republicans, they're going to spin it. But then do you ask a second question to say, okay, that's all fine. Let's come back to the first question. She did that sometimes, didn't do that all the time. Here is the first question asked in the interview that I picked up on, where Dana Bash said, okay, day one, day one, you get elected. What are you going to do? Here's day one. Character and the strength of who we are as Americans. Really dividing our nation. And she's complaining about Trump first. She's complaining about Trump first. So what would you do day one? Day one, it's going to be about one implementing my plan for what I call an opportunity economy. I've already laid out a number of proposals in that regard, which include what we're going to do to bring down the cost of everyday goods, what we're going to do to invest in America's small businesses, what we're going to do to invest in families, for example, extending the child tax credit to $6,000 for families for the first year of their child's life to help them buy a car seat, to help them buy baby clothes, a crib. There's the work that we're going to do that is about investing in the American family around affordable housing, a big issue in our country right now. Just ask for a second here. Child tax credit is not the domain anymore of just Democrats. Got Republicans on board with this as well. So to act like this is a big separating point, it's not. But this is the housing thing back to the $25,000 do we think? Believe me, we got issues with rents. I've talked about it a lot here. I've got issues with BlackRock eating up everything it can in the real estate world. Once again, I don't have a lot of jobs outside of monetary and military that I want the government to do in roads. But outside that, one of them I do want them to do is to bust up. Monopolies, right? That's, I want a free market. You bust up the monopolies, the collusion, the cartels. And so I'm for that. But this idea, do we think then that taking $25,000 from a taxpayer, right? So like I've often said, let's say the tax implication for American family, $10,000, is it worth two and a half families worth of money to take it from them and give that money to the federal government to have them put that back into the market, which we've all talked about this. The second you start putting $25,000 in, you artificially inflate the price of houses by maybe not $25,000 but $21,000, right? As buyers go, oh, there's this extra money in the market, we'll be able to plus up the price. Do we think that the most efficient use of $25,000 is to run it through the pipeline of the federal government, take it from a tax, run through the pipeline, and bring it back out the other side. Harris does. So there are a number of things on day one. So day one, day one, that's a day one plan. All right, next part of this is more of the ideas of what's going to happen here on these first days. Let's go to cut two here if this is the right one. There's more to do, but that's good work. I want to get some clarity on where you stand on some key policy issues. Energy is a big one. When you were in Congress, you supported the Green New Deal. And in 2019, you said, quote, there is no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. Fracking, as you know, is a pretty big issue, particularly in your must-win state of Pennsylvania. Do you still want to ban fracking? No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As vice president, it's so interesting, too, that so much of the Harris campaign is saying, because I told you all for weeks, in my opinion, the Harris campaign is running like Donald Trump is the incumbent, like he's in office. Like it wasn't this bunch that's been running things for three and a half years, right? They say all these things are going to fix. They're acting like a party that was not in power. They were the ones in power. But to come back and say, well, as a vice president, I chose not to ban fracking. So many other times you'll hear Kamala Harris say that I couldn't, you know, on vice president, I couldn't, this is the Biden thing. But here, all of a sudden, then she has the power to ban fracking, but she didn't. Okay? So continuing. President, I will not ban fracking. In 2019, I believe in a town hall, you said you were asked, would you commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking on your first day in office? And you said, there's no question. I'm in favor of banning fracking. Okay. Point, they're good for going to bash. This is 2019 to 2020 because she just said on the debate stage in 2020, she said, she wouldn't ban fracking 2019. She did. So what changed? So yes. So it changed in that campaign. In 2020, I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I've not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word. What made you change that position at the time? And I think this is the most important part. Be clear. My values have not changed. I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate. And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far, the Inflation Reduction Act, what we have done to invest by my calculation over probably a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, investing in a clean energy economy. What we've already done, creating over 300,000 new clean energy jobs, that tells me from my experience as vice president, we can do it without banning fracking. Okay. So, and by the way, now she has the power to do that as well. So, in 2019, she said her values haven't changed. So, in 2019, she's either BSing us or in 2020, she was BSing us. And she's BSing us now in 2024. If you are that committed to what you believe is the Green New Deal, Kamala Harris, then, and people on board, the Green New Deal would say fracking is bad, then why are you defending it now? I mean, come on, I would love a politician one day. Just go, I'm doing it because I got to win Pennsylvania. And it's not as big a deal to me as I said in the past. So, it's worth trading that for winning Pennsylvania. Of course, that's not what she said. This is what we waited a month for for this interview. Coming right back, I've grabbed some text and calls at 3430106. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FMTalk 10065. All right, so, 123 FMTalk 10065, about 10, 12 minutes away from Secretary of State, West Allen, joining us. Talk about those names on the voter rolls, on the federal voter rolls that are not citizens, and how we dug the information up and what it means going forward, what they're going to do. All right, get back to a little bit from last night's interview, pre-recorded, aired live, or whatever, the CNN interview. And that, once again, in defense here, Dana Bash did better than I thought she would. Sometimes did not do follow-up questions, but a lot of times she did. Of course, you couldn't tell where our politics are on this, but I think it's worth giving her a little tip of the hat saying, "For who you are, you did a good job." Dana, all right, here we go. Let's go back to this. This is another question on the economy, I think. You talked about, you call it the opportunity economy. You are well aware that right now, many Americans are struggling. There's a crisis of affordability. One of your campaign themes is we're not going back. But I wonder what you say to voters who do want to go back when it comes to the economy specifically, because their groceries were less expensive. Housing was more affordable when Donald Trump was president. Well, let's start with the fact that when Joe Biden and I came in office, during the height of a pandemic, we saw over 10 million jobs were lost. I'm going to point out that Trump, that was going on during the Trump administration as well. People, I mean, literally, we were all tracking the numbers. Hundreds of people a day were dying because of COVID. The economy had crashed. In large part, all of that because of mismanagement by Donald Trump, of that crisis. When we came in, our highest priority was to do what we could to rescue America. And today, we know that we have inflation at under 3%. Okay, I'm sorry, please go ahead. A lot of our policies have led to the reality that America recovered faster than any wealthy nation around the world. But you are right. Prices in particular for groceries are still too high. The American people know what I know it, which is why my agenda includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries. For example, dealing with an issue like price gouging, what we need to do to extend the child tax credit to help young family. So we're back to the child tax credit, but so price gouging, price gouging at a grocery store level of what's their profit margin? One to one to two percent here. So you're going to stop them from taking that at the grocery store level. You're going to take it at the producer level. Are you going to tell you think we had supply chain issues during COVID, which we did big time? If you start making it, and believe me, I don't have to say I know too buying groceries like somebody campaigning, like regular people buy groceries. I mean, I point out that I just drive by dollar general and like $70 comes out. I didn't go in and $70 out of my wallet. If you're going to start putting getting government, just like this thing on the housing, you think government is going to get into this in the food world, not the old grocery store, but in the world of food, in the world of groceries, they're going to get into this and start poking around and make the prices. I mean, price gouging is when, and I still have an unpopular opinion, even living on the Gulf Coast, surviving hurricanes, that people remember, the people in the market, and the price gouge after a storm. We all remember that, and those businesses often go out of business. But if you're price gouging, you're taking a eight-pound bag of ice that should cost $2.59 or something like that. I think that's what ice is up to now, somewhere in that neighborhood, and you're charging $24 for it. Okay. So, grocery chains have about a 1% to 2% profit margin. Where's the gouging in that? Where are you going to go after the individual? Are you going to go to Nabisco or Beatrice and tell them how much they can charge at a wholesale level for their foods? I'm just trying to figure out, I mean, somebody had said this before, and I thought it was so apt if, and I'm way paraphrasing, and this was, I think, a Democrat saying this to the Harris campaign, that if your opponents are calling you a communist, you know, socialist or a communist, probably not the best thing to do to have the first plank of your platform, you roll out, beat price controls. But that's where we are with this. The economic slump that has been that they're running against has been under their watch for three and a half years, but they're running against this like they weren't in power. They keep going back to Donald Trump. It's not like we're asking these questions after three months that you can say, well, listen, we're still dealing with the hangover for the previous administration is three and a half years in. And you're still saying, wow, it was, it was those folks. All right, from the text line here, let's see a name tag. Oh, you hold man. Hey, you hold man. He said, her voice sounds very timid, anxious, nervous, and above all, very insincere. Thanks for what you'll do. You hold man. Well, thank you, you hold man. Let's see here. The real Sam suggests that we have Dalton. If you're listening, we should have a weekly winner for college pick them. So people who have no chance of a comeback can win something each week. That's everybody gets a trophy. No way, man. It's for all the marbles. Real Sam, come on. See, Adam says, Sean, the there are more things that I can count to be scared of with Kamala. One of the scariest things to me is she honestly believes she can handle the job of president. It seems it seems to believe it or she has people telling her that she can do it. All right, come on back. Secretary of State, West Allen joins us right here on Midday Mobile. You're listening to Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 106 spot at 1235. And it is a Friday edition of Midday Mobile glad to have you along 3, 4, 3, 0, 1, 0, 6. Get in touch. We'll come back to later next hour. More of, I don't know, I mean, it could have been worse. The CNN interview Dana Bash with the team, the duet of Harrison Walls. But as I mentioned earlier, good to get this man back on the show. And he was on the show with us maybe a month or so ago, a little more, talking about this subject. Then afterwards, some action on this, and it has been a big talker on this show for weeks. Secretary of State of the State of Alabama, West Allen joins us now. Thanks for your time. Hey, Sean, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. You know, last time you and I talked, we were, you were close to talking about what has happened since, but you were, you were still looking, trying to go through and we'll get into it. The red tape to get this information about people who are on the voter rolls that aren't citizens. So since then, you've had some success. So the first thing I got to ask is how the heck did you get the information? And what did you have to do? Well, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to come on week this afternoon. Thank you, Sean. Yeah, it's been an uphill struggle to try to make sure we've got clean and accurate voter files. And since the first day I stepped into this office on January 16, 2023, you know, that's been our goal is to, you know, number one, make sure Alabama residents have confidence in our election systems and communicate frequently with all the probate judges, circuit clerks, sheriffs and boards of registrars and everybody, the whole team that it takes for run elections in Alabama. And then, but, you know, trying to get anything out of this Biden Harris administration to try to make sure our elections are secure and are more secure and better fortified is like pulling teeth. And, you know, we, we made multiple contact, multiple ask, multiple repeated requests to the United States Citizenship Immigration Services for their data on the legal, legal non-citizens that are here and get their information, the non-citizen number that they are issued when they're here legally, the alien ID number that they have. And so, you know, we ran into brick wall of that. And so we just decided to be a little more creative about that. And so we were able to, to, to get some data from some state agencies, the Alia and, and labor and, and they've been fantastic to work with. And so, you know, we, once we ran that and cross-checked that information and those individuals against our centralized voter file here in the state of Alabama, you know, we found what we found a little over 3,200. And so, we alerted the boards of registrars because let me just clarify something. The Secretary of State's office cannot register individuals to vote. That duty, that lawful duty, lawful jurisdiction is only pertains to the 67 boards of registrars offices in the state of Alabama. We keep and monitor and maintain the centralized voter file for the state. So the hard work, and I'm so grateful to the boards of registrars out there that do the hard work day in and day out. They are the foundation of election integrity. They're the ones that, that I want to thank. And because they work hard each and every day, but we sent that out, told them to take a look at what we've sent them, and activate them, and then initiate steps necessary to make sure that no non-citizens were on our voter file. Yeah, you know, I don't want to take too long of this because I have so many other questions, but this one just sticks with me. So here you are, the Secretary of State of the state of Alabama. What are 50 states at? So you're duly elected ensconced in the position. You asked the federal government for this information. You said going to, what do they tell you? How's the hustle work? What do they tell you why they can't give you that info? I mean, can you just like put it in regular language for me? I mean, what do they do? One of the things is like delay, okay, like take time to get back with you. The next thing is they talk about privacy, and then they tell you to go look at this database or try to direct you to that, you know, database over here or this over here, and then, you know, we just like, all right, well, we're just gone. I'm, you know, I'm a guy. So they don't say no. They just, they just obfuscate. They just make it like it's, you never have. Okay. All right. Cause I was wondering if they said no, cause your Secretary of State would be like, Hey, this is my job. But they don't. Okay. Well, I mean, they did, they did tell us basically, no, it's just that they tried to point us in a different direction. We even talked to the white. Excuse me. We even talked to the White House, Sean, and had numerous calls with them. And, of course, they were no help. And that was, you know, a wait time. So we, we just had to go about a different way. And, you know, and I'm a guy that likes to get things done. And, you know, I can't stand the red tape bureaucracy. It's just joining us talking to the Secretary of State of the State of Alabama, Wes Allen. I want to, and you pointed this out. I've, and so many times, and talking about this on the show, I keep reminding folks, we're talking about legal people that are legally in the country because we're like, Oh, the, as I know, no, no, these are green cards, work visas, right? These are people we know that are legally in the country, which I welcome you do it the right way. Cool. I'm glad to have you. But you're not a citizen, so you don't get to vote. So how does that person get themselves on the voter rolls? Like, what is the mechanism? What do they do to each other about the number they have? I mean, how do they go from being somebody who's here to work? But how do they then find themselves where they could vote? Well, good question. You know, there may have been some that were issued the ALIN ID number, got naturalized, and then got on the voter file or registered to vote, which is, you know, that's, that's fine. Yeah, when you're a citizen. They have, they have all rights. Yeah. But one of the things that Alabama does well is, Alia does a very fine job with foreign national driver's licenses, and then our driver's licenses. So an foreign national driver's license is someone who is legally in the country, you know, legally, and they have all the pertinent paperwork visas and everything, and they have to renew every year, unlike us, who renew every four years, and it's a different sequence of numbers. So let's just say someone with a foreign national driver's license goes on our website, does the online portal to register to vote, they put in the foreign national driver's license. Well, those sequence of numbers, when it pings off of, from our website, and it pings off of Alia, checking that, Alia will come back to us and say, that's non-verified. So the boards of registrars then, you know, go to a deeper dive and see what exactly is going on there. But we're still looking into how that happened and how the ones that did end up on the voter file and get to the bottom of it. So we're still digging into the data and digging into these issues. Yeah, it seems like when the pinging, you know, if you and I go on wherever, right now we have our college football pick them going on. If I go in and enter the wrong email with the password or whatever, it says not, not happened. You can't come in. And I'm trying to get into pick a college football game. So I would hope that like when they would go in to go into, you know, here's the name, here's that alien ID number, it'd just be like, no, no, you don't even get to put any more information. Come back, try again. Right, right. And let me just say that, you know, if they are in active, if anybody on this list, when they were inactivated and it was a mistake or the information was bad or whatever, you know, they can't up until the day of the election, all they have to do is update with a valid Alabama driver's license. Now, we are the first Secretary of State in Alabama to implement taking only a valid Alabama driver's license or your social security number. We've done that and have been very strategic with it. And they can still vote as long as they can prove they're a naturalized citizen or a legal citizen. They can update their voter file to show that Alabama, that valid Alabama driver's license and they can still vote. So we aren't purging anybody to media. Sometimes, Sean, I don't mean this to you, but there's some media outlets out there that didn't quite, I guess, grasp of what we had done. And they're, you know, they're spreading this misinformation, which they accuse a lot of people of sometimes, but they were the ones that are saying the misinformation that we were purging people. So anyway, we are taking a very careful review. This is not a one-time review of our voter file. We're going to continue to make sure it's like daily hygiene. Yes. You can take, you know, you brush your teeth every day, you wash your hair, text shower every day. So it's just like keeping a clean voter file. It's the foundation. But see, in that, it takes somebody who's doing that. If you're willfully or unwillfully unaware, right, then these things happen. Because I can imagine after you coming out with this, Secretary of State and other states went, oh, okay, maybe we better check on this because we talked about the effect here on the show that this people were really focused on. We'll get to L2. But I said, y'all, I think this is important because I'm a rule of law person for Alabama. But what does this mean? Not for Alabama. I mean, what does this mean in other states? I mean, if you found that many, what the heck outside of Alabama is going on? Now, I know, and I know your listeners see the news, the nationwide news, and they keep up with it. You've got a very engaged audience out there. So, you know, all I can do is what inside the borders and laws that I've been given jurisdiction over and with the help of the legislature and, you know, Governor Ivey signing great laws into place, good policy, we're further you know, fortifying Alabama's election. So, people can have confidence. And when they go vote, your vote is going to count. And it's not going to be disenfranchised by somebody that doesn't need to be voting. But have you, can you say whether other states have called you about this? I mean, it seems like if you found, okay, that's what I was wondering. I mean, if what you did here, you know, I'm not above trying to mirror, you know, if somebody's successful in whatever, mirror it. And I say, oh my gosh, look at that there in Alabama, what it must be here. Hey, Wes, how'd you do it? And then you could tell them. So, numbers-wise, and that, you know, that grabbed some headlines as well. I mean, because I mean, that number, 3,251, and you said there could be different reasons for the people on that list. But that one's big to a lot of us. And then people started asking me, well, how many of those are in AL2? And I said, I saw your document showed Mobile Baldwin counties. Have you looked at it as those people would fall into a congressional district or just by county for the number of non-citizens on the voter rolls? I have not pulled the numbers to the specific, like, specific congressional districts. We just broke it out by county. Okay. So, I'm just answering. Yeah, I'm getting questions answered. They've been asking me for a few weeks. I said, listen, I'll have the secretary on to answer that. The going forward with this, I mean, you talk about, you know, and somebody's asking where you said ID, and you have, you know, your messages to run here on the station about people having your federal ID to vote in Alabama. But what about, what did you call it, the non-citizen or the alien driver's license? I don't know the right term. Foreign national driver's license. If somebody has that, that doesn't, I mean, does it look different than an Alabama driver's license? It's the same credential, but it has a F-N on it to designate it and foreign national written out on it. So, the folks that are working as poll workers on election day, they should be able to identify that. And then, you know, if they try to scan it, it's not going to be verified when they want to pull books, when they come through. Okay. So, they said there is, I mean, there is something there checks in place to make sure, yes. Todd and Graham Pay is asking, and you kind of hit on this, but I'm going to ask his question. I had the non-citizen's 3,200 non-citizen's been removed from the voter list or deactivated. So, that process, you said, is ongoing. Will that be, will you feel that you're at a, you've arrived at the end of it by the time people go vote in November? Yeah, we're working on it daily. And, you know, the boards of registrars are the ones that, you know, have to go in and update the files or do whatever they've got to do to the files for this list. So, they're the ones actually doing the heavy lifting as far as making sure that the list are up to date. So, they're the ones doing that. And it's an ongoing effort. We're still working those lists. All right. If you're just joining us talking to Secretary of State, West Allen, then so many questions come in. Let me try to pick out some of these. Let's see. Let me give you just a while. You're looking for that. I'll give you some stats, or one particular stat, while you're finding the next one. We've got about 3.9 million and some change voting age population in the state of Alabama, 3.9 million and some change. We've got about 3.8 million and some change registered voters. So, we're sitting at about 96% of registered voters in our state. And I think that's very good. And if people, it just shows that if you want to get registered to vote in the state of Alabama, you can. We make the process streamlined, but with checks and balances in that. And for all these people that say voter suppression and screaming voter suppression, I don't want to hear another word about that. People have the opportunity to get registered to vote in this state if they are a citizen and if they don't have a disqualifying felony. Yeah. And see y'all, you're registered. So, when I start my griping, when we only have 18% turnout, I know y'all are registered. So, don't give me that garbage. Don't turn out out there. Right. Get a plan together. And, you know, there was about 63% turnout in 20 in the general, and about 66% turnout in 2016. All right, Secretary, we appreciate it. I know we're up against the break here, but we'll have to do it again soon. Thank you for what you're doing. Thanks for keeping us in the loop on this. Yes, sir. Glad to do it, Sean. And thank you for having me. I appreciate it. All right, Secretary of State, West Allen, and we'll be right back. More Midday Mobile. This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FMTalk1065. All right, it's 1253 FMTalk1265, Midday Mobile Friday Style. Time to check in with my buddy, Anna, at Mobile Bay Coins in fine journey. You know, Anna, Ron and I were talking a couple times this week about the movement here, gold and silver and how busy y'all have been. I guess that's required you to do some restocking around there. Yes. So, a lot of people have been coming in investing in gold and silver and trying to understand what that means of, you know, securing their dollars or hard earned cash into something tangible. And we were pretty much sold out of the gold bars. I think we have one gold bar left. So, we just restocked. New shipment came in today with gold eagles. There's maple leaves, South African cagrands and bars. Yeah, and that reminds me, I think you and I have talked about it. I know Ron and I have talked about it several times. There's the actual intrinsic value of the precious metal, right? The spot price was moving. But when you just talk about those specific coins, you also change a little bit that sometimes, well, actually, I think a lot of the times, those end up being worth more than what the actual just spot price of the precious metal is. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, the American gold eagles are pretty popular since we are in the US. A lot of people want those and they are worth more than just, you know, an average bullion gold bar. So, yeah, they are meant to buy the United States men. So, I mean, somebody who might haven't checked the spot prices, say, okay, it's X today. But if you have something that's super collectable or rare, there's a value even beyond that. Yes, absolutely. And there's also the older $20 gold pieces, what they call the double eagles that you could purchase as well with the St. Gordon's design, which is the Lady Liberty Walking and the Liberty Head, which is just a bus. Right. And tell folks how that, because this is the truly is, I mean, not trying to be cliche, the tip of the iceberg and what's going on at the store. So, they need to come see you and talk with you. Give them directions to come on by. Yes, they're absolutely. We're at 22-04 government street. We're just west of Little Flower Catholic School and Church. Good stuff, Anna. We'll talk again next week. Sounds good. All right. And checking in for Mobile Bay Coins and find jewelry. My gosh, some text here. I get to a few of these, all kind of coming in at one time here. All right. So, Pat says, how many of the 3,200 have actually went to vote though? Don't know, you know, and this is, Pat, that goes back to the argument that they made in Washington about the SAVE Act. Now, the Republicans pushed the SAVE Act and you could say it was just for effect because Republicans in the House would never get it through the Senate, let alone it would be vetoed by Biden. But I asked why? Why, you know, what was the old thing, Dad, all he said, you get over the target, you're taking, you know, he started taking flack, that means you're over the target. The visceral response of this and the SAVE Act was just saying, hey, let's codify this further into law that you got to be a citizen to vote. I mean, like most people have said, well, that's the, yeah, so why would there be so much pushback on this idea? You got to be a citizen to vote. But there was, and one of the arguments Pat was made was, well, nobody's really doing this. There's not these people out there that are not citizens. They're not really, there's not really happening. So they're making a mountain out of a bowl hill or some other statement here. In other words, it's not a real thing. Then let me argue it back the other way. If it's not a real thing, what do you care? Go ahead and codify it into law. If it's not happening, but it is happening. And that's what, what's been shown here. So Pat, back to what you're saying, I am, I'm the stick in the bud. I believe in the founding documents or rule of law. And so even if one person, and I don't have many people wanting to vote, there's a lot of people like, okay, could that could move the election this way or the other? Even if it was one person, the rule is you got to be a citizen to vote. So I want to make sure only citizens vote. And once again, these are legal immigrants in our country so many times I get text here like, oh, those are legal. They're legal and I welcome them. I mean, be part of the, you know, be part of the job, be part of whatever you're here doing. Cool. I like it. But to vote, because those folks are doing it legally. You know, I'm actually a person that has the unpopular opinion of, I think we should open more legal immigration into our country. I'm just a hawk on the illegal part of it. The immigration part, I'm not, I don't have an issue with it, but you got to do it legally. But you don't get to vote until you're a citizen. So even if it was one person out of 3200, I don't know what the number is, that would bother me. I would point out that, I mean, if you have a rule and you just say, well, you know, not enough people are violating it. It's okay. Then Tusker says, Sean, I was in a rush into work to say, um, who, who did the story on the owls in Midtown? I heard, I heard the boys telling him about this morning. That's over at land. Yeah. We, if we have time to talk about owls attacking ponytails in the city of Mobile, we might get to that in the second half of next hour. But joining me in just a few minutes, T. Bruce McKinnon from Bay Business News, last to talk about with him when we come back.