By Brionna McCall
Montgomery is known for its deep African American history, and Alexandria Stephens is a part of that history as she is the first African American woman to hold the Montgomery County director of elections position.
Stephens grew up in Camden, Alabama, and moved to Montgomery to attend Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM). According to Stephens, it was ironic because her curriculum required an internship, so she interned at the Montgomery County Election Center.
“I interned there for about two years until I graduated undergrad,” she said. “I went back to school to get my master’s at AUM as well, and I worked for the elections during that time.”
After graduating with her master’s, Stephens went to Jefferson County and served as the elections coordinator there. She worked in South Carolina as the director of voter registration and elections for some years before returning to Montgomery. “It was a full circle for me, so now I’m back at the Montgomery County Election Center, where I got my start,” she said.
Stephens’ undergrad internship with Montgomery Elections is why she wanted to pursue the career. “My colleagues and I have a running joke about once you get in elections, you never get out,” she said. “When I got that internship, I just needed it because it was a graduation requirement, and when I got into it, I liked it and wanted to know more.”
When she first got the director of elections position, it did not occur to her that she was the first African American woman to hold that position.
“Until Judge Love made that recognition, once he said that out loud, I was like, ‘You know what, you’re right,’ so it made me feel proud,” she said. “I just really didn’t think about it until then, so I feel proud to be in this position and serve the community.”
According to Stephens, interacting with the community is the best part of working in her position. She feels successful seeing the work from start to finish. After each election, she is proud of what she and her team have done and is ready to succeed again in the next one.
As a woman of color, there were hardships in her career in elections. “When I first got started, I noticed I was attending a lot of election-related conferences, and there were a lot of males, not many females,” she said. “There were times where I was overlooked or not really acknowledged… it’s in the past, but there’s not as much hardship now.”
A goal Stephens has for the elections are on a state level. “Different states run their elections quite differently. When studying other states and how they proceed or conduct their elections, one thing that some states have are vote centers in early voting,” she said. “Alabama has absentees, but there are some states who actually call it early voting, so they sit at vote centers so many days before an election… depending on the type of election, they can cast their ballot early, whether it’s close to their work or their home, instead of going to the polling place on election day.”
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