Despite not making it through the Legislature this year, Alabama Speaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter believes the push will continue to pass a closed primary bill.

The legislation died in the Senate on the final day of the 2026 legislative session, after failing to receive a floor vote.

The measure would have required party registration to be able to vote in the state’s partisan primary elections, and stipulates that existing voters must register with a party to participate in primary elections starting in 2027.

Ledbetter discussed the issue this week on “The Rightside” with Allison Sinclair and Amie Beth Shaver, presented by Yellowhammer News.

“Yeah, I think, you know, of course, we moved the bill out of the house fairly quickly, if you remember,” Ledbetter explained. “And I, not only did I co-sponsor the speaker, I get the first pick on the calendar, and that’s where I put it. Now, I felt like we had made good strides in it and trying to get it across the finish line. The Senate had it for about three weeks.”

The SAVE Act, HB541, sponsored by State Rep. Ernie Yarbrough (R-Trinity), passed the House and cleared a Senate committee but ran out of time before the session adjourned. The bill would have gone into effect January 1, 2027, leaving the 2026 primary elections unaffected.

“I think they put it on the last day. The problem will put in a bill on the last days of changes that comes,” Ledbetter continued. “You never know what it’s going to be. You know, is it going to mess it up? Is it going to cause problems? Is it going to make our members go into a bad vote? Because I think most of our members want to see that happen, but they want to make sure they did in the right way. I do think there were a lot of talk about different amendments or substitutes, and I don’t know how that would have went.”

With the measure failing to pass, Alabama still works under an open primary system, allowing voters to choose which party’s primary to participate in on election day. Under current law, voters who participate in a party’s primary may only participate in that party’s runoff.

“But the thing about it was, we got it out and we had, I guess we put it in on Thursday,” Ledbetter added, “Had the meeting for committee on Tuesday, which was our committee meetings are on Wednesday. I asked them go ahead and have one, and then they had another one Thursday to get it voted out. So had it on the floor just in pretty quick time. And I thought that would give the city plenty of time to do something with it.”

Ledbetter is still hopeful that they can craft a bill in the future that will pass and be signed by the governor.

“You know, it didn’t happen. So we’ll come back next year,” he said. “There’s been some talk about different ways of doing I think Oklahoma’s got a piece of legislation that the Chairman has talked to me about, so we’ll certainly continue to work on that.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee