I have a problem with government officials assuming powers they don't clearly have.
I disagree that they don't clearly have these powers. Other Secretaries of State exercise these powers whenever they choose to do so. Are we to believe that with 49 other states in which these powers are assumed, that the legislators of Alabama never intended their Sec State to exercise them as well?
As James Madison said about the lack of detailed enumeration of what was to be the Common law in the Constitution:
" If they had undertaken a discrimination, they must have formed a digest of laws, instead of a Constitution. "
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a3_2_1s10.html