Alabama voters navigate primary election confusion after 11th-hour gerrymander

Note: Confused? Voters with questions can call the nonpartisan Election Protection Hotline at (866) OUR-VOTE to speak with a trained volunteer.

As Alabama voters head to the polls Tuesday to choose primary nominees for the 2026 midterm elections, confusion reigns.

In some races, they’ll be casting ballots normally. But they won’t be voting in four congressional contests that were postponed earlier this month when Republican lawmakers took the astonishing step of changing the congressional map after absentee voting in the primaries had already begun. And litigation over other races is ongoing.

The chaos follows the Supreme Court’s ruling last month in Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Alabama quickly moved to bring back a map that a court had found to be in violation of Section 2 and intentionally racially discriminatory.

But that didn’t stop Alabama Republicans from trying to use it — no matter how much confusion its enactment causes.

Consider how complicated voting instructions have become: Last week, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen told reporters that voters should participate in the May 19 primary election to make their choices in numerous state and local races, as well as the three congressional races that aren’t impacted by the map changes. 

For residents in congressional districts 1, 2, 6 and 7, any votes cast in those races on the May 19 ballot will be tabulated and publicly reported — but ultimately, they will be void. 

To have their vote counted for the congressional primaries, voters in those four districts will have to return to the polls for an August 11 special primary election. 

The changes will also undermine standard election practices. Because the delayed vote in August is taking place so close to the November general election, there will also be no time for a runoff. Instead, the candidate who earns the most votes in each race will be declared the party’s nominee. That means a candidate with significantly less than 50% of the vote could become the nominee.

Alabama lawmakers have also passed a last-minute gerrymander for state senate districts, causing even more confusion for voters. 

“That’s still under litigation,” Allen said last week. “At this moment, there is no special election for those state senate districts.” 

But a ruling appears unlikely to come in time for the primaries, forcing the state to stick with a fairer court-ordered remedial map for the state senate race.

The August special election will cost the state an estimated $4.4 million, Allen said.

Alabama community leaders say they’re coming across plenty of voters who are uncertain about what the last-minute changes mean for them.  

“A lot of people are confused about whether they should show up,” Jessica Barker, founder of the Alabama voting advocacy group Lift Our Vote, said Monday on a national call about voter protection efforts. 

There are other issues, too, unrelated to the map changes. 

“Also we’re finding a lot of people are inactive — they’re showing up inactive when we’re verifying their registration status,” she added. 

Barker urged residents with inactive voter status to go to the polls, where they will be able to fill out a form allowing them to cast their ballot.

And NAACP Board Chairman Leon Russell offered his own clear message to voters: “Alabama voters must turn out, and they must turn out in numbers.” 

In the wake of the Callais ruling last month, which demolished one of the principal achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, Southern states have rushed to redraw maps and undermine Black voting power — often under pressure from President Donald Trump.

Alabama’s case has been particularly extreme. 

In a fiery ruling last year, a federal court deemed the map Alabama now plans to use “an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength” that amounted to “intentional racial discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantee.” 

And there may be more complications ahead. 

The court concluded that the map was both a Section 2 VRA violation and a racial gerrymander. That’s why Black voters are now arguing that, even with the VRA gutted, the map remains illegal — and they’re asking* the court to block it again.

If their request is granted, the decision will almost certainly be immediately appealed, sending the case back to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alabama is the second state where voters face massive tumult thanks to a last-minute GOP redistricting push in response to Callais. 

In Louisiana, Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s active primary election earlier this month in an unprecedented attack on voting. 

In both states, Republicans are taking extreme measures to change maps on the eve of an election, all in an effort to roll back Black political representation while helping Trump pull off a stunning, mid-decade redistricting scheme across the country to retain control of Congress in the midterms. 

The Elias Law Group (ELG) is representing a group of plaintiffs in the case. ELG Firm Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.