Last week, Alabama got its glimpse of the Census data that will be used for reapportionment, which will have to be completed in time for the 2022 election cycle.
State Rep. Chris Pringle (R-Mobile), the chair of the legislative committee on reapportionment for the Alabama House of Representatives, acknowledges being crunched for time as the May 24, 2022 primary election day approaches.
During an interview that aired on Monday’s broadcast of Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5’s “The Jeff Poor Show,” Pringle commented on the newly released data with findings he said that did not come as much of a surprise.
“It was kind of interesting, but we’ve kind of known that counties like Lee County, Madison, Limestone County, Tuscaloosa County, Shelby County, Baldwin County — those have grown,” Pringle said. “Some counties have really, really lost population like Dallas County.”
“It’s about economics,” he added. “Where there’s no economic growth or jobs, people have to leave. Somewhat what we’re seeing in a lot of Alabama is lack of economic opportunity in certain areas because where we have job growth, population growth is there.”
The Mobile County lawmaker explained what was involved in the process before the legislature would formally meet to take up a proposal.
“Let me put it this way: The numbers that have been released, that have been sent to the state of Alabama are now being loaded into the computer, and it will take five days to load all of the information into the computer, five working days,” he advised. “You can’t even go into our office now, click on a computer and start working. It is going to take a couple of more days to get the information we need to work off of because, remember, we work off of what we call census blocks. There are 252,300 individual census blocks in the state of Alabama that we work off of, and that’s a little geographic area that tells us how many people live in that area. We use those and build those blocks in order to form individual legislative and state school board districts.”
Pringle acknowledged the clock was ticking for the work to be completed in the rumored October special legislative session, given the primary voting date in May 2022.
“I hope so because once the legislature convenes, and they pass a bill, and it goes to the governor, and then it is signed — all that information has to go to the counties, then the registrars have to go through and count every registered voter’s file and make sure they’re assigned to the right voting precinct, and they’re assigned to the right legislative and congressional districts,” Pringle stated. “Every voting record has to be updated. And then, they have to get a count of how many people are in each voting precinct and how many different ballots they have. There are well over 4,400 different ballots in the state of Alabama. Some voting precincts are split. They might be in two different House seats, two different Senate districts. So, there’s a split in some of the voting precincts, and they have to use different ballots.”
“And all of those ballots — they have to print those ballots to get them ready so they can mail them out prior to the May primary,” he added. “There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
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