It’s a ballot that might resemble something you’d see in Heisman Trophy balloting, but the entire first congressional district special election process, which begins with the September 24 primary and could potentially go until December 17, will be using what is called a “ranked-choice” ballot for absentee voters.
With this ballot, the voter is asked to signify their first choice, second choice, third choice — all the way through their ninth choice. And then throughout each stage of the election — the primary, the potential runoff and the general election, the respondent’s top choice still in the race will receive the vote.
It is a ballot that has passed muster with the U.S. Department of Justice and had been previously used in election in South Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas.
However, it’s not a type of ballot that Baldwin County Probate Judge Tim Russell supports for this election.
“I did not support that philosophy,” Russell said to Yellowhammer News on Tuesday afternoon. “I know it was approved by the Justice Department but my whole life — I’m 65-years old. I’ve been voting since I was 18. I’ve never known of a voting process like that. Now, you know when you get into some corporate ballots for corporate directors and stuff sometimes you have weighted- or numbered-ballots, in the business world or you might be in a condo association or something and you might weight ballots. But the Justice Department approved it, so it’s legal. I can’t understand why someone would want to do that.”
Russell, a Republican who has held Baldwin County’s probate bench since 2010, argued there is the possibility one’s vote might be weighted differently given the differing circumstances of the primary, the potential runoff and the general election.
“If I was an absentee voter and I’m a veteran, if I was on active duty overseas, because I was one of the ones that believes in voting, I would have asked for the second ballot in the runoff,” he said. “Because to me, sometimes you might weight things one way, but it would change if there were two other people in the runoff if you didn’t expect them to be.”
According to Russell, once the ballots are collected, it will be up to Alabama Secretary of State Jim Bennett to see to it that the ranked ballots are properly counted for the prospective candidate in the potential runoff and the general election.
“Here’s the good thing for the judges,” he added. “The nice thing this time — the judges, we’re not responsible for those. Those are going to be handled all by the secretary of state. They were just informing us how it would work in case we have inquiries. We have had quite a few people asking about those, but we will not be handling those. The secretary of state will be.”
An image of the ballot can be found below. Click the image to enlarge.
Follow Jeff on Twitter @Jeff_Poor
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