They Want to Pick Our Nominee for Us. Four Days to Tell Them No.

The Alabama Democratic Party would like to choose him instead. That is not a characterization. The vice chair of the Alabama Democratic Party has spent the past three weeks publicly urging Democratic voters to walk into the polls on August 11, ask for a Republican ballot, and vote — with the stated aim of knocking off the Republicans her party would least like to face in the fall. She posted it. She was asked about it in an interview and repeated it. 1819 News and Yellowhammer News have both reported it. She has been perfectly open about the reasoning. The idea is to get what she called weaker opposition.

Wall of Shame — Today: Drummond

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Drummond Company PAC (Birmingham) has put $10,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account. Figures then voted no on the National Coal Council Reestablishment Act, against the federal body advising on coal jobs and policy — one of only a handful of Democrats opposed. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

AND UNDER THIS PARTICULAR ELECTION, THEY CAN

Alabama law bars crossover voting between a primary and its runoff. That is why Democrats who voted on May 19 were locked out of the June Republican runoffs.

August 11 is not a runoff. The Attorney General has determined that this is a separate primary election. The practical consequence is that the bar does not reach it. A voter who took a Democratic ballot on May 19 may take a Republican ballot on Tuesday, and it is entirely legal.

So this is not a scheme that has to work around the rules. It works within them. Which is exactly why it deserves an answer at the ballot box rather than a complaint afterward.

WHY THEY THINK IT IS WORTH THE TROUBLE

Because they can count.

This is a special primary in August. There is nothing else on the ballot. It falls in the first week of school across much of the district. Turnout is expected to be very low, and every person who has looked at this election says so.

There is no runoff. Whoever finishes first wins the nomination outright, however small the plurality.

Put those two facts together and you have the only kind of election where a comparatively small, organized bloc of voters can decide the outcome without ever winning anything. They do not need a majority. They only need enough.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY NOTICED

At its summer meeting last weekend the Alabama Republican Party voted to add closed primaries to its platform. In arguing for it, the chairman of the Bylaws Committee pointed directly at those posts as the reason the party needs to be able to decide who votes in its own primaries.

The state party chairman has separately urged Republicans to turn out on August 11.

That is where this now sits: a party platform amended in August because the other side announced in July that it intends to help pick our nominee.

WHAT THIS BRIEF WILL NOT DO

We are not going to print her target list.

She named the front-runners she wants beaten in each district. We are not repeating those names, and we are not telling anybody which Republican to vote for on Tuesday. Six Republicans are on that ballot in this district and this brief does not pick among them — it never has and it will not four days out.

Whoever wins on Tuesday has our full support from Wednesday morning. That is the whole point of this operation.

What we will say is this. A ballot cast by somebody who wants a Republican to lose in November counts exactly the same as a ballot cast by somebody who wants a Republican to win it. The only answer to that is more of the second kind.

THE SEAT IS THE REASON ANY OF THIS IS HAPPENING

None of this would be worth anyone's trouble if the Second District were still safe for the man who holds it.

It is not. On June 2 the Supreme Court cleared Alabama to use the 2023 map. The district that was drawn to elect Shomari Figures is gone. Mobile is out, the Black voting-age population falls from about 49 percent to under 40, and this is Republican-leaning Alabama ground again.

The Democratic Party knows what that means. It is why a Washington committee put $100,000 behind Figures back in June — six weeks before Republicans would even choose who runs against him. It is why the vice chair of that party is working the Republican primary from the outside.

They are spending money and effort on this seat in August because they expect to lose it in November.

FOUR DAYS

Tuesday is not a referendum on Shomari Figures. He is not on that ballot, he has no primary, and not one vote cast on August 11 is cast for him or against him. His record is a November argument.

Tuesday decides who gets to make it.

Monday, August 10 — last day to hand-return a completed absentee ballot, by close of business. The application window has closed.

Tuesday, August 11 — polls open. A mailed absentee ballot must arrive by noon.

Registration closed July 27. The rolls are final.

Show up.