Open Letter Response to ALGOP Ballot Access Denial

Open Letter to the ALGOP Steering Committee

To ALGOP,

This is my response to being denied ballot access in 2026 due to my alleged violation of the “sore loser” by-law in 2022 when I ran for Governor against Kay Ivey in the primary and then ran a write-in campaign as “the only Republican still in the race.”

First, I admit that when I announced my campaign for Governor of Alabama on September 17, 2020, I did not know much about the inner workings of the ALGOP. I am a lifelong Republican having only voted for Republican candidates. I was a volunteer in two campaigns for Governor Fob James (1994 and 1998). During this time our former Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker and his family attended a weekly Bible study in my home in Montgomery. Tom got me involved in attending political meetings in and around Montgomery. The ALGOP Senior Vice Chair Troy Towns spoke at the church I pastor in early 2016 right after I began supporting Donald J. Trump on my podcast in January 2016. I came out publicly for Trump when there were still 17 people in the Republican primary for the presidency. I received a lot of attacks from fellow Republicans at that time for my support of the “outsider.”

I decided to run for Governor in 2020, when I saw Governor Kay Ivey show a blatant disregard for the 1^st Amendment during the Covid-19 bioweapon attack. Her order for churches to shutdown was a clear violation of the 1^st Amendment as the US Supreme Court has ruled that we do not lose our God-given rights enumerated in the US Constitution even during a cataclysmic event (See Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 1886).

Furthermore, President Trump and top doctors across the country had made known the Hydroxychloroquine-Zinc-Azithromycin and Ivermectin protocols on national news. These protocols were saving lives, but no one in political leadership in our state was pushing for them and people were dying. I saw this as a complete failure of leadership in Alabama. I shared the information of the doctors who were saving lives in every speech that I gave across the state. Lives were saved by this information that I shared and even my own when I was on death’s door from Covid-19 in August 2021. It was the Ivermectin protocol that saved my life.

My first meeting before launching my campaign for Governor in 2022 was with former West Point professor (teaching Russian) LTC (retired) Bryan Read who was then on the ALGOP state executive committee, Steve Guede also on the state ALGOP executive committee and the late Tim Sprayberry who was at that time the Chairman of the Cleburne County Republican Executive Committee. That meeting was followed by a meeting with the former ALGOP Senior Vice Chairman Troy Towns. All these very conservative and dedicated Republicans in Alabama encouraged me to run for Governor against Kay Ivey. It was quite a blessing to have these men support me. During my run for Governor, I met many wonderful, conservative people as I travelled to speak in different Republican and grassroots groups across the state. The one thing I heard almost everywhere I traveled was, “Anybody but Memaw Ivey!”

As I began to actively campaign, I encountered the “moderate/Bush/Rove” RINO Republicans as well. I saw them oppose HB31 and other freedom-focused legislation. I discovered that Kay Ivey had taken over $100,000 from a Soros-funded PAC in 2018 and that she had appointed eight Democrat judges during her time in office. Ivey raised our gas tax which is something clearly contrary to the ALGOP platform. Then in a truly Democrat move she blamed the spread of Covid on the unvaccinated people in Alabama. She was praised by President Joe Biden for that insult to over half the Alabamians who refused the experimental mRNA “vaccine” that has proven to be a failure and very detrimental to millions. But the final straw for me was that Governor Kay Ivey took approximately $1.7 Million in dark money leading up to the Republican Primary of 2022. Yet, with all this unethical and un-Republican conduct, the ALGOP looked the other way and allowed Kay Ivey to stay on the Republican ballot.

These clear violations of the law, the Constitution, the ALGOP platform, basic ethics, as well as clear election irregularities in the May 24, 2022, Republican primary is why I could not in good conscience support Kay Ivey in the general election. Those election irregularities included 30,000 votes moving from Kay Ivey to Tim James in real time, then five minutes later 30,000 votes moving from Tim James back to Kay Ivey. My vote totals froze for two hours which is a statistical impossibility and all of the candidates in that election had less votes on the morning of May 25^th than CNN had reported at 11:45PM EST on the night of the election. Where did those votes go? Cyber Security expert Clay Parikh did the analysis on the ALGOP primary election of 2022 and found the irregular ballot dump for Kay Ivey which was identical to the ballot dumps for Biden in 2020.

In addition to this, I attended the electronic voting committee meeting at the state capital on September 1, 2022. During that meeting, the ES&S voting machine vendor was there to attempt to patch the remote access cyber worm called Printnightmare that had infected Microsoft systems on June 29, 2021. That means that Alabama’s voting machines, pollbooks and Dell laptops were not protected from Printnightmare during the May 24, 2022, primary election. This is a serious vulnerability that allowed the remote manipulation of our voting machines in Alabama in May 2022.

The main purpose of my Republican write-in campaign was to do an election integrity test. We asked people who planned to write-in my name on the ballot for governor to also take a picture of them with their ballot (which is legal to do in Alabama) and text it to a secure number so we could compare the number of ballot selfies to the number reported by the Secretary of State. Sadly, this effort failed due to voter manipulation and intimidation. We received reports of voters being told by poll workers that taking a picture of themselves with their ballot was illegal.

(Since then, our concerns and evidence have been confirmed by the work of Nobel Prize-nominated scientist Dr. Douglas Frank. He is an expert data modeler and after examining four Alabama election cycles via four Alabama voter rolls (one paid for by Mike Lindell) Dr. Frank discovered the cyber algorithm that has been manipulating Alabama elections for a very long time. Dr. Frank can pull up the algorithm pattern in one Alabama county and predict to over 99% accuracy exactly how the other 66 counties elections will vote. That would be impossible if things were organic and not manipulated).

Before I began the write-in campaign, I consulted the Alabama Secretary of State website and state law concerning doing a write-in campaign. John Merrill’s direction on the website was that state law allows a primary “loser” to run a write-in campaign as long as the person does not change political parties. So based on that understanding of state law and me being convinced that Kay Ivey was at least half Democrat, I launched my write-in campaign. I was unaware of the ALGOP “sore loser” by-law. It was not until I was well into the write-in campaign that I was informed about the “sore loser” by-law. But it was also then that I discovered the so-called “sore loser” by-law is not equally applied to everyone. It became very evident that the ALGOP plays favorites when it comes to enforcing their by-laws on some while ignoring them for others.

This brings me to my current decision to run for Lt. Governor in 2026. As a very conservative Christian pastor with a church and ministry school, I did not have a desire to run for office again nor did I plan to. However, in 2024, I felt the Lord Jesus begin to lead me to run for Lt. Governor. I took quite a while praying about it as I asked the Lord for confirmation of His direction. That confirmation arrived in my office at the church shortly thereafter. It was the Black Robe Regiment Award from LTC and former Florida GOP Congressman Allen West. It was a beautifully engraved and decorated Cherokee Tomahawk that had my name on one side. He awarded me this after he learned about my very conservative, Christian stances and my courage to run for Governor of Alabama in 2022.

I filed with the Alabama Secretary of State in December of 2024 and made my official announcement in January 2025. Almost immediately invitations to speak began to come in from Republican and conservative grassroots groups all over the state. Not one time did I ever receive an email or phone call from anyone on the ALGOP steering committee stating that I would not be allowed to qualify for the Republican ballot due to alleged violation of the “sore loser” by-law. So, in over a year of campaigning, I was never told by anyone from the ALGOP steering committee or ALGOP official that I would not be allowed to qualify and should thus cease my campaign.

Furthermore, in May 2025, I sought counsel and direction about this issue from then ALGOP Chairman John Wahl (after hearing him talk about it on the Jeff Poor Show that morning). In that conversation and others that followed, Chairman Wahl told me that “sore loser” rule was not made to keep true, conservative Republicans like me off the ballot, but it was to keep Democrats from getting on the Republican ballot. I was also told by Chairman Wahl that if someone did challenge my ballot access, I would get a hearing to make my case to receive an exemption to the “sore loser” rule. Wahl told me that he supported me being on the ballot in 2026. Not once did Chairman Wahl tell me that I would automatically be denied ballot access nor did he to advise me to stop my campaign for Lt. Governor. These talks with Chairman Wahl were part of what encouraged me to continue my campaign, spending much of my own money to do so.

Instead of handling this issue early on, the ALGOP (represented by Chairman John Wahl) allowed me to go on thinking everything would be fine. I have even heard from sources within the party leadership that their plan all along was to let me spend/waste my money and energy and then deny me ballot access at the last minute. This was the dirty trick planned to demoralize and discourage me from ever running again, but it is also premeditated fraud. Behind the scenes, there were orders from ALGOP “higher-ups” to groups (who had already invited me to speak), to un-invite me. Some complied with their orders to silence me, and others stood firm and respected my right to free speech within the party.

Sadly, my foray into Alabama politics as a very conservative, Christian pastor has been met with unfairness, attempts to silence me, censorship, religious discrimination, disregard for the law, unethical practices, and clear double-standards from my own party the ALGOP. My years of sermons, voting record, speeches and presented policy objectives are all in line with ALGOP platform and the Alabama Policy Institutes Blueprint for Alabama. I am a Republican through and through. I have donated thousands of dollars to Republican clubs and causes across the state and have ONLY donated to Republican candidates.

To deny me ballot access while ignoring far more grievous violations of state law and the party platform committed by other Republicans is clear hypocrisy and discrimination. Case in point, is the situation with “John” Wahl presenting a Tennessee Driver’s License in 2023 during a traffic stop for speeding and his attempt to vote in Alabama with a press badge made by Jim Zeigler. These are far more serious issues than I have allegedly committed, yet John Wahl gets to be on the ballot. I have nothing personal against John Wahl, but this is a clear example of the arbitrary nature of the application of the “rules.” And this obvious lack of fairness and attempts to silence me are already poisoning many against the Alabama Republic Party.

It is time for the ALGOP leadership to stop acting like Democrats in their primary process and to show more integrity. It is time for the ALGOP to be the party of law and order, free speech and fairness, i.e. equal treatment of fellow Republicans. We are supposed to be the “big tent party” instead of a private club. We Republicans are supposed to be the champions of free speech and access to political discourse and offices…not blockers of the regular, everyday conservative people who want to step up and get involved.

I hope you all make the decision to do what’s right and fair in this situation.

Sincerely,

Pastor Dean Odle