Merrill told ThinkProgress in an interview Tuesday that he thinks the individuals who switched party affiliations should be sent to prison for five years and hit with a $15,000 fine, the maximum allowable punishment for the low-level felony.
“If these people knowingly and willfully voted because they didn’t like the law, they thought the law was wrong, they thought the law was stupid, they didn’t think the law should be enforced, our intentions are to identify those people, fully investigate them, if it’s warranted to have them indicted, to have them prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he said. “I want every one of them that meets that criteria to be sentenced to five years in the penitentiary and to pay a $15,000 fine for restitution. That’s what I want.”
He added that he is not the prosecutor, but he believes none of these instances of “voter fraud” should be afforded leniency.
Randall Marshall, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama, said he was “stunned” by Merrill’s recommended prosecution.