Your Vote Counts!
When Alabama Republicans go to the polls on Sept. 26 to select their nominee for the U.S. Senate, a new law will be in place that could prevent some people from casting their ballots.
For the first time, Alabama law will prohibit people who voted in one party’s primary from voting in the other party’s runoff. It means that if you voted in the Democrat primary back in August, you won’t be able to vote in the GOP primary run off between Luther Strange and Roy Moore.
It’s all perfectly legal, but that doesn’t mean it won’t cause confusion.
For many years, the law allowed so-called “crossover” voters to switch primaries for the runoff. Candidates have openly campaigned for members of the other party to come over and vote for them, and the impact of those votes has been credited – or blamed – for turning the tide in some elections.
Alabama’s Democrats have banned crossover voting for years, but it was merely a party rule and not a state law. The Legislature passed the new election law this year, and it will affect both Republicans and Democrats from now on.
It’s easier to understand the new rules if you think of a Democrat or Republican primary as a single process. In the initial vote, a candidate must receive more than 50 percent of the ballots to win that party’s nomination. This is what happened to Doug Jones, who received the Democrats’ nomination for Senate. That ended the primary, and Jones will face the winner of the Republican primary in November.
If you voted in the Democrats’ primary, your role in this primary election cycle is over.
None of the GOP candidates received enough votes in the first phase of the Republican primary to win outright. This necessitated the runoff, which pits Strange against Moore.
If you voted in the Republican primary in August, your work isn’t done yet – you get to choose between those two top candidates.
The law also allows voters who did not participate in either primary to cast a ballot in the GOP runoff.
And of course, all voters are eligible to go to the polls in November when the winners of the party primaries face each other in the general election.
Remember, your ability to vote is a sacred right guaranteed to all American citizens. There are some rules that govern where and when you can vote, but these are mostly procedural and can be easily understood.
If you have specific questions about the voting process, you can probably find the answers in the 2018 Alabama Voters Guide prepared by the Secretary of State’s Office, which I have attached to this blog.