August isn’t prime voting season, yet some voters in Alabama will go to the polls next Tuesday for a special primary election.
It stems from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in April that found Louisiana’s congressional map amounted to an unconstitutional racial-gerrymander – a decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act.
What followed was an effort by Alabama Republicans to revive a congressional map previously declared unconstitutional by the federal courts.
Within a week of the ruling, Gov. Kay Ivey called Alabama legislators into special session to create a contingency plan for elections with that map should the high court allow it. When the Supreme Court granted Alabama permission to use the map in an early June decision, that paved the way for the Aug. 11 contest.
The special primary election will decide the nominees for the general election on Nov. 3rd in four affected congressional districts . Those districts are the 1st and 2nd Districts in the southern half of the state and the 6th and 7th Districts, which include the Birmingham area. With Tuesday’s special primary, the results of Alabama’s regular primary in May have been nullified. Also Tuesday’s races will not lead to runoffs. The candidate with the most votes gets the nomination with or without a majority.
Voters can check the Secretary of State website to confirm their current congressional district assignment and their polling place.
WBHM media partner BirminghamWatch produced an online election guide with information on Democratic and Republican candidates for Congressional Districts 6 and 7.
For an overview of next Tuesday’s contests, we reached out to BirminghamWatch Executive Director André Natta.
He spoke with WBHM’s Andrew Gelderman.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
What do voters going to the polls need to know?
The most important thing that they need to know is which congressional district they are in, particularly for folks in Jefferson County and people in Birmingham. There is a section of the city that runs up along U.S. Highway 11, for the most part that is a dividing line between being in Congressional District 6 and Congressional District 7. That is important to go ahead and look up with the Alabama Secretary of State's office, so that you are able to know who you're actually going to be voting for on August 11th.
For Districts 6 and 7, we're seeing some familiar faces, but it's a lot of new names. Can you tell me a little bit more about all of that?
I think there are people who see this as an opportunity to slip in and have a good chance of raising some issues and raising awareness on four specific offices. I think as a result, you see a lot of interest, particularly on the Democratic side for Congressman Palmer's seat in District 6. We currently have four candidates running for the Democratic nomination for that seat. It is a little quieter on the GOP side. However, it is worth noting that there is somebody running against Congressman Palmer. It's worth noting that the incumbents aren't necessarily safe per se, although there is no Democratic candidate running against Congresswoman Sewell (in District 7). We've tried our best to go ahead and capture all the pertinent and basic information needed to go ahead and vote, whether it's sample ballots or candidate bios in our voter guide on our website.
So what should we be watching out for as we get closer to that August 11th date?
I think the closer we get to August 11th, the more we should be paying attention to whether we're hearing anything from these candidates and whether you're hearing anything that rises to the occasion of getting the media to pay more attention to this race, especially considering how much attention was paid to get us to the point where we had the election called for in the first place. It is a fairly important election, especially considering all the other races that are going to be on that ballot come November. But you are holding this election in one of the busiest weeks of the year for many families being the first week of school and an opportunity for people trying to get settled back into a regular life as much as that may be in the middle of August in Alabama. So whether people are motivated enough to go ahead and leverage their right to vote, that's the most important thing to see. Like what are those turnout numbers gonna look like? We already kind of were assuming that they're going to be relatively low. But how low will they be considering how little conversation there's been leading up to the election in the first place?
