Alabama Voters Return to Polls After Redistricting Voids June Primary
Alabama voters in four congressional districts went back to the polls on August 11, 2026, for a special primary election forced by a last-minute redistricting overhaul that voided ballots cast in the state's June primary. NPR
Polling places opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m. Voters participating in the primary had to declare which party's ballot they were casting, per Alabama's primary rules. The special primary covered Congressional Districts 1, 2, 6, and 7, along with State Senate Districts 25 and 26. The voter registration deadline passed on July 27. (Alabama Secretary of State)
The August 11 do-over traces back to the U.S. Supreme Court's Callais decision, which ruled that drawing district lines based on race is unconstitutional, dismantling a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act, passed during the civil rights movement, had required states with histories of racial discrimination to get federal approval before changing voting procedures or district boundaries. Alabama, along with several other southern states, moved to redraw congressional lines before the 2026 midterms. Alabama was the second state to see voters disrupted by last-minute redistricting, following Louisiana. (Democracy Docket)
Less than two weeks before the regular June primary, Alabama's Republican-controlled legislature reconfigured four of the state's seven congressional districts. The overhaul reshaped a largely Black district that had been drawn in response to a prior court ruling that found the map then in use discriminatory. Voters who participated in the first primary had their votes voided by the redistricting, triggering the August 11 contest. NPR
The reshaped districts carry significant stakes for Alabama's delegation. Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, first elected in 2024 after Black voters sued and federal courts ordered Alabama to redraw its congressional map, faces the most difficult path to reelection under the new lines. Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell is the other Black Democrat in Alabama's seven-member House delegation; the remaining five members are white Republicans. Black residents make up a little over a quarter of Alabama's state population. NPR
Turnout is expected to be low. In the 1st Congressional District, three Republican candidates competed in the special primary, with projections of 5 to 10 percent turnout. (Alabama Reflector) NPR reported that the August 11 second primary generated voter confusion and concerns about depressed participation, with Democrats not conceding the redrawn terrain and Republicans seeing an opening. NPR
The redistricting and its fallout carry particular resonance in Lowndes County, located in Alabama's rural Black Belt, a predominantly African-American region named for its rich black soil. Lowndes County sits along the route of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march, the movement that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. NPR
The broader context here is a sequence that began with litigation, moved through a Supreme Court ruling, and produced a legislative redrawing that upended an election cycle already in progress. Black voters had successfully sued to force a second majority-Black district in Alabama, leading to the 2024 election of Figures. The Callais ruling and the legislature's subsequent redrawing effectively reopened that settlement, resetting the map and the calendar. The result is an election in which voters in four districts had to vote again on different ballots, some in different districts than they voted in during June.
For operatives in both parties, the August 11 primary served as a test of turnout machinery under unfavorable conditions: an August election date, voter confusion over which district voters now reside in, and the likelihood that only a small fraction of eligible voters would participate. The candidates who emerged from the special primary will advance to the general election under maps that both sides are still litigating.
