Alabama legislative committees approve GOP gerrymanders despite ongoing primary election

Alabama lawmakers took initial votes Tuesday giving the greenlight to legislation that would change congressional and state senate district maps in primary elections that are already underway.

Legislative committees in the state House and Senate approved the new boundaries despite the fact that absentee votes have already been cast in the primaries. The bills now head to the House and Senate floors for approval. 

Republican lawmakers advanced the measures amid furious opposition from Black Alabamians. 

Black voters and community leaders spoke before the committees Tuesday, condemning Republican lawmakers for rushing to put in place new maps to roll back decades of progress in Black political representation.   

“Hear me clearly when I say that we the people of Barbour County, we the people of Alabama, we the people of the Black Belt, we the people of the South, we the people of this nation, we refuse to be silent,” Eliza Jane Franklin, a Barbour County resident, told lawmakers. “And we refuse to let you kill us by killing our vote.”

Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee are racing to pass new maps for this year’s midterms after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling last week gutting the landmark Voting Rights Act. The ruling will make it much more difficult for minority voters to prove in court that electoral maps dilute their voting power. 

In the case of Alabama, the attempt to redraw boundaries expressly challenges a legal settlement in which the state agreed not to redistrict until 2030.

Democratic lawmakers pressed state Rep. Chris Pringle (R), the sponsor of the congressional redistricting bill, to explain why Alabama was now taking steps to change the maps in spite of that agreement.

“I’m not an attorney, sir, so I couldn’t answer that,” Pringle said, then suggesting that the state was able to disregard the agreement because the “Supreme Court changed the voting rights law.” 

Pringle said his bill would allow the state to use its 2023 map, which had previously been blocked in court, but only if a federal court lifts the injunction against it.

Alabama’s push to redistrict is remarkable because voters have already cast absentee ballots in the state’s May 19 primary election. The legislation passed in committees will allow the state to nullify votes cast in some of the congressional races and later hold special elections under new maps instead. 

Both committees took rapid votes after hearing a minimal amount of public testimony and rejecting proposed amendments from Democrats, including one measure that would have required public notice of the changes. 

State Sen. Vivian Davis Figures (D) harshly criticized Republican lawmakers who voted down her amendment to communicate the changes to impacted voters. “Thank you to all of my colleagues for showing me once again who you are,” she said.

Democrats also accused Republican lawmakers of causing unnecessary confusion for Alabama voters. But state Sen. Chris Elliott (R), sponsor of the state senate redistricting bill, blamed the courts instead. 

“I think that, in this instance, it is the courts that have caused this confusion by getting into our redistricting process and changing that district,” Elliott said.