Voter turnout for Alabama runoff among the lowest in 35 years

A whopping 87% of Alabama’s 3.6 million registered voters avoided the polls on Tuesday and turned away from participating in contests that determined the GOP nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat, secretary of state, auditor and the Democratic nominee for governor.

Alabama saw just under 13% of registered voters cast a ballot, a low percentage even for a primary runoff. Tuesday’s turnout is the third lowest Alabama has seen in the last 35-plus years of major runoff elections – those featuring big statewide races like U.S. Senate or governor.

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“You can slice it and dice it and talk about the parties and the ideologies and the issues, but the truth of the matter is that it’s not a sign of a healthy democracy when (turnout) gets that low,” said Jess Brown, a retired political science professor from Athens State University and a longtime observer of Alabama state politics.

In terms of turnout, only the GOP primary runoff for lieutenant governor and the 2014 GOP runoff for secretary of state saw less interest among registered voters.

And regardless of the turnout, an election still costs taxpayers about $5.5 million. That is the across-the-board price tag to put on any statewide election, according to Secretary of State John Merrill.

Merrill told AL.com on Wednesday that he was not surprised with the turnout, saying it fell in line with his predictions of a 10-15% rate. He said the May 24 primary turnout rate of 23.4%, despite featuring competitive races for governor and the Senate, was more of a stunner and fell well short of his initial predictions of 28% to 32%.

“The marquee of all the marquee races in our state are U.S. Senate and the governor’s race, which is why I was surprised that turnout was so low in the (May 24) primary,” Merrill said. “But I wasn’t surprised with the runoff.”

He said the big-money supporters and organizations backing candidates like Republican Senate winner Katie Britt and secretary of state winner Wes Allen were able to get their supporters out to vote.

“Every race (Tuesday), the candidate with the most money won,” said Merrill. “The people who backed Katie, and Wes Allen, they were the Farmers Federation, the Business of Council of Alabama, the bankers, the credit unions, forestry and all of those groups who have an interest invested in Montgomery. They all turned their people out which is what you expect them to do … they turned out across the board and that’s why their candidates won.”

Abysmal turnout

Turnout was low throughout Alabama. No county reached 30% participation among registered voters, and the statewide average at the county level was just 15%.

In the counties that saw a competitive GOP runoff for an open seat in the Fifth Congressional District, turnout was still well below 20%. It was at its highest in the Fifth District in Limestone County, where it reached 18.5%.

In that race, Republican voters nominated longtime Madison County commissioner Dale Strong over Casey Wardynski, former superintendent of Huntsville City Schools, to replace U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, who gave up his seat to run for Senate and lost to Britt on Tuesday.

Turnout in Alabama’s largest counties was abysmal. In Jefferson County, turnout was 10.9%, despite having a slate of competitive runoff races for the State House and a contest for district court judge and the Jefferson County Board of Education.

In Mobile County, just 8.4% of registered voters showed up. Aside from the statewide races, the county only had two GOP runoff races locally – a State House contest to replace retiring Rep. Victor Gaston and a district judge contest.

A handful of rural counties led the way with relatively high turnouts, including Wilcox County, in Alabama’s Black Belt. But a majority of the 28.9% of registered voters in Wilcox who showed up to vote did not turn out for Brooks or Britt. Wilcox, a primarily Democratic county, saw most of its nearly 2,500 ballots cast for Democratic candidates, including a tight race for Alabama State Senate District 23 to replace Senator Malika Sanders-Fortier, who ran in the Democratic race for governor and lost to Yolanda Flowers.

Merrill said a statewide trend he observed was a discrepancy in the Republican voters who cast a vote in the U.S. Senate race, but then opted not to mark the rest of the ballot. Of the 464,577 total votes cast in Alabama, 401,297 votes were marked in the Senate race or 86.4%.

In the secretary of state contest between Allen and Auditor Jim Zeigler, the total votes were 379,004, or a drop-off of nearly 22,000 voters. Approximately 46,000 fewer Republicans voted in the auditor’s race than they did in the Senate contest, and the Public Service Commission races had roughly 65,000 fewer voters than the Britt-Brooks contest.

“That’s remarkable,” Merrill said. “It shows that some people are interested in what they are interested in and they will vote in what they are interested in and that’s it.”

Early voting

The historical low turnouts during runoff elections could propel talk of reform, although Alabama lawmakers show little interest in making wholesale changes to the state’s election system.

Merrill and Allen — the GOP nominee for secretary of state — in comments to AL.com, said they believe turnout is driven by candidates.

Merrill said that there would be no impact if the state opted to make an election date as a holiday, and Allen said that encouraging greater turnout rates is not a function of the office.

“The role of the secretary of state is to ensure that every vote that is cast is safe and secure,” said Allen, a former probate judge from Pike County who faces Democratic challenger Pamela Laffitte and Libertarian Jason “Matt” Shelby in November. “It is not the constitutional role of that office to boost turnout. That is the job of the candidate. Voting is a right and many people around the world wish they had and we should not take it for granted.”

Alabama Democrats have long urged state officials to allow for early voting, believing that it would add to voter participation rates. Alabama is one of only five states that does not offer pre-Election Day, in-person voting options for all voters, according to data by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

State Rep. Adline Clarke, D-Mobile, who has sponsored legislation for early voting, said she believes that no-excuse absentee voting would have enabled more people to vote in advance via mail and in-person at the offices of the state’s absentee election managers. She said past efforts to remove the state’s excuses for voting absentee have not advanced out of legislative committees.

“I truly believe most voters want the option to vote early and at their convenience,” said Clarke. “This would increase voter participation. The challenge is convincing my colleagues in the Legislature that early voting would be good for our constituents. I will keep trying.”

Allen, who sponsored past legislation to eliminate curbside voting in Alabama, said he “believes in Election Day, not election month.”

Ranked-choice voting

Ryan Williamson, an associate professor of political sciences at Auburn University, said he believes ranked-choice voting (also known as instant-runoff voting) could reduce the tax burden for holding an extra runoff election following a primary.

He said if Alabama allowed ranked-choice voting, the contests “would have been decided four weeks ago” during the primary and saved the state $5.5 million.

Under this system, voters get to rank their preferred candidates during a primary. If someone gets 50% plus one vote after all the first-choice votes are counted, then an election is over and the candidate wins. But if no one gets 50% plus one, it’s onto another round as ballot counters eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of first-place votes. The eliminated candidate’s second choices then get redistributed as votes for the other candidates, and the reallocation of votes continues until some reaches 50% plus one.

Only Alaska and Maine use ranked choice voting for statewide contests. Another 52 cities and one county use it for municipal contests, according to the nonprofit organization Fair Vote. In Utah, 23 cities and towns entered into a pilot program authorized by the state legislature to use ranked choice voting for 2021.

Ranked-choice advocates say the system is more democratic and less expensive than low-turnout runoff elections.

Merrill said he does not believe ranked choice voting “is a good endeavor to engage in,” adding that he believes it’s “very confusing for political scientists let alone our general constituency.”

“It results in someone other than that person’s primary choice being elected,” said Merrill.

Reform efforts

Merrill said there hasn’t been any legislative push to eliminate runoffs in Alabama, aside from past interest from retiring Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison. Ball had pitched eliminating runoffs by looking at a threshold of 35%, meaning that if no candidate got 35% of the vote during a primary election, then the state would pay for a runoff. But as long as one candidate passed the mark, the candidate with the most votes would be declared the winner.

Ball’s past pitches would have allowed political parties to pay to hold their own runoffs.

Brown, the retired political science professor from Athens State, said he believes if a candidate tops 40% during the primary, and is ahead by a margin of more than 10 percentage points, then that candidate should be declared the winner without having to run again in a runoff.

“There would not have been a Senate runoff,” Brown said, referring to Britt’s 45.2% of the GOP vote on May 24, which was 16.6 percentage points ahead of second place Brooks, who got 28.6%.

Williamson, at Auburn University, said that without the Senate contest on the runoff ballot, “I shudder to think” what the turnout percentages would have been.

“It is one that kind of drew national attention,” he said. “But the outcome was pretty well baked in. Most people are not that engaged and don’t want to take time out of the summer … it takes time and energy to go vote in the second round of the primaries. And that’s energy that most people are not willing to expend.”