Why Alabama Voters Had to Vote Again in August 2026
Alabama voters in four areas went back to the polls on August 11, 2026, for a new primary election. Their first primary in June did not count anymore because the state changed its voting maps at the last minute. NPR
Polling places opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m. In Alabama, voters in a primary must choose which party's ballot they want. The election covered four congressional districts (1, 2, 6, and 7) and two state Senate districts (25 and 26). The deadline to register to vote was July 27. (Alabama Secretary of State)
The reason for the do-over goes back to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling called the Callais decision. The Court said that drawing voting district lines based on race goes against the Constitution. That ruling struck down a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a landmark law passed during the civil rights movement to protect Black voters from discrimination. After the ruling, Alabama and several other southern states redrew their congressional maps before the 2026 midterm elections. Alabama was the second state to have its voters disrupted by last-minute redistricting, after Louisiana. (Democracy Docket
Less than two weeks before the June primary, Alabama's Republican-controlled legislature changed four of the state's seven congressional districts. Think of it like a school redrawing its attendance zones mid-year: students who thought they went to one school are suddenly told they belong to another. The new map reshaped a district that had a large Black population. That district had been created because a court found the old map discriminated against Black voters. When the legislature drew new lines, the votes people cast in June no longer counted, so the state had to hold a new primary on August 11. NPR
The changes matter for who represents Alabama in Congress. Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures was first elected in 2024 after Black voters sued and federal courts ordered Alabama to draw a new map. Under the new lines, he faces the hardest path to keeping his seat. Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell is the other Black Democrat in Alabama's seven-member House delegation. The other five members are white Republicans. Black residents make up a little over a quarter of Alabama's population. NPR
Few voters were expected to show up. In the 1st Congressional District, three Republican candidates ran in the special primary, with only 5 to 10 percent of voters expected to participate. (Alabama Reflector) NPR reported that the August 11 primary caused confusion among voters and worries that even fewer people would vote. Democrats did not give up on the new map, and Republicans saw a chance to gain ground. NPR
The changes hit especially hard in Lowndes County, in Alabama's rural Black Belt. The Black Belt is a mostly African-American region named for its dark, fertile soil. Lowndes County is along the route of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, the protest that helped lead to the Voting Rights Act. NPR
The broader context here is a chain of events that started with lawsuits, moved through a Supreme Court ruling, and ended with a new map that disrupted an election already underway. Black voters had sued and won a second majority-Black district in Alabama, which led to Figures being elected in 2024. The Callais ruling and the legislature's new map essentially undid that outcome. The result is that voters in four districts had to vote again, some in entirely different districts than the ones they voted in during June.
For both political parties, the August 11 primary was a test of whether they could get voters to the polls under tough conditions: an election in the middle of August, confusion about which district people now live in, and the likelihood that only a small share of eligible voters would show up. The winners of this special primary will move on to the general election, while both sides continue to fight over the maps in court.
