by Glynn Wilson

The people of Alabama need to start paying attention to the race for the White House now that the state's presidential primary vote has been moved to Feb. 5, according Nancy Worley, vice chair of the Democratic Party and former secretary of state.

"It's possible we will know who the presidential nominees will be on Feb. 5," she said, since so many states have also moved their primary votes for president to that early date.

She is not saying who she will support personally in that vote, but she said, "I would put any one of the eight Democrats up against any of the Republicans."

Ms. Worley was in Birmingham Monday night meeting with the Greater Birmingham Chapter of Democracy for America and the Progressive Democrats of America. She discussed a number of election issues with the group.

She could not say much about her ongoing court battle with state Attorney General Troy King, except to point out that he was appointed by Gov. Bob Riley and, like many of president Bush's appointments at the Department of Justice, he had never tried a case in court.

And, King's state indictment of her came along at the same time and for the same reason the Bush Justice Department brought it's case against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, she said, "Because we were both doing well in the polls."

Ms. Worley is a former high school teacher from Decatur who always wanted to be involved in public service to help her state and country. For many years, she volunteered her services to the Alabama Education Association and educated herself on the election process.

When she retired from teaching and got the opportunity to run for office, it took a lot of hard work and traveling all over the state since she did not have a lot of money. But the hard work paid off in 2002 and she was elected, only to see her reelection chances fade in 2006 because of the partisan fights that erupted in the courts.

When updating the voter rolls became a heated issue in the news because of King's intervention at the behest of Riley, Ms. Worley said that she could get the job done by the fall of 2007. Riley had the court place him in charge of that process, and he failed to meet the federal deadline as well.

But you would not know that from reading the corporate newspapers and watching the local television news in this state.

As a matter of full disclosure, I have known Ms. Worley since the late 1980s when she proved to be a tireless and invaluable source on a coastal erosion story I covered for a chain of newspapers on the Gulf Coast.

After spending so many years learning the system in Alabama, and after four years of running the election system as secretary of state, she is now a knowledgeable source on what is right and wrong about the system today.

And she happens to agree with me that many of the problems we face in Alabama are holdovers of the era of George C. Wallace, the powerful little governor who ran the state like his own fiefdom and tried to translate his populist appeal into presidential power.

"George Wallace held power for so long," she said, that many of the systemic problems we face can be traced to his legacy.

There is no doubt, she said, that the governor of Alabama "is one of the most powerful governor's in the country" because he is largely accountable to no one.

Even President Bush must face the Washington press corps and answer questions on occasion. The prime minister of Britain is required to face members of Parliament and answer questions on a regular basis.

But not one single media company in Alabama has ever bothered to examine why the governor here has so much power and so little accountability.

Ms. Worley's main advice for the group, in the interest of providing accurate and fail safe elections for the people of the state, is to push and make sure that every polling machine is tested prior to each election. That is not being done as the law requires, she said.

Also, many probate judges and poll workers are not adequately educated on the issues, which could open the door to election fraud from the technically competent crook - like what apparently happened in Bay Minette in 2002.