Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill will speak at the Tally-Ho Restaurant on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

Merrill will be discussing voter fraud in both Dallas County and West Alabama at the scheduled two-hour event.

Leonard Ingram, chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party, spoke praise of Merrill.

“I think he’s done a good job as Secretary of State and I think he’ll be a future governor in Alabama,” Ingram said.

Merrill became Secretary of State on Nov. 3, 2014, when he defeated Lula Albert-Kaigler with over 60 percent of the vote.

Merrill, a native of Wedowee, has currently been active in national voter registration. He will join other partners to observe National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25. The event is held on the fourth Thursday every year since 2012.

Since Merrill took office, Alabama has registered 1,064,616 new voters, bringing the state’s total to 3,418,839 as of Sept. 7.

“We continue to work daily to make sure every eligible U.S. citizen in our state is registered to vote and has a photo ID. We want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” Merrill said in a release. “There is no freedom more integral to this Republic than the right to vote and participate in our democratic process.”