Alabama Voters Face a Second Primary After New GOP Map
Ballots cast in May were voided when Republican lawmakers redrew four of Alabama's seven districts, and candidates and voters alike say the confusion could depress turnout.
Voters in parts of Alabama returned to the polls Tuesday for a second primary this season, after the state's Republican-controlled legislature redrew four of Alabama's seven congressional districts and voided the ballots already cast in the May primary.
The redistricting followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that dismantled a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by holding that it is unconstitutional to draw district lines based on race. Alabama was one of several Southern states that moved quickly to redraw maps before the midterm elections. The legislature acted less than two weeks before the regular May primary, reshaping a largely Black district that had been created in response to a court decision finding the state's earlier map discriminatory.
At Beulah Primitive Baptist Church in Lowndes County, in Alabama's rural Black Belt, Willie Dixon said she had assumed she was in the same district until another resident, Mary Gatson, told her it had changed. "Create enough chaos, and people will give up and go home," Dixon said. "With these two [primaries] coming so close together, I know there will be some people that are not going to show up because they think they've already done it."
"I think it's very inappropriate," Gatson said. "That's politics though."
Rep. Terri Sewell, one of two Black Democrats in the state's seven-member delegation, said the issue is "fair representation." She criticized the Supreme Court for allowing maps drawn for stated partisan reasons "even if it discriminates against minorities." Black residents make up a little over a quarter of Alabama's population; the other five members of the delegation are white Republicans.
The new map creates the hardest path for Rep. Shomari Figures, first elected in 2024 after federal courts ordered a district including Mobile and Montgomery. The redrawn seat excludes Mobile, his hometown, and drops the Black share of the population from about 47% to about 40%, he said. Figures is unopposed for the Democratic nomination and is not on Tuesday's ballot.
Six Republicans are now competing where only one, 29-year-old Hampton Harris, ran before. "I was confused as the candidate," Harris said, predicting an effect on turnout. Barbour County Commission President Jerry McGilvray welcomed the new lines, saying his area has little in common with coastal Mobile. The front-runner is state Rep. Rhett Marques.
This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), in accordance with our editorial policy.
