Chaos: Alabama prepares to eliminate majority-Black districts, while moving forward with elections it may annul
Alabama lawmakers will convene Monday afternoon for an astonishing eleventh-hour special session to prepare the state to use a gerrymandered map that dilutes the power of Black voters.
It’s part of a sweeping bid to give Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections.
The rapid-fire redistricting session would be unprecedented on its own. But just hours before the session was set to convene, Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) announced that Alabama would also move ahead with its May 19 primary election using the old map while it waits for two court decisions affecting voting districts.
That approach — which might require annulling the first vote and holding a second — will likely create confusion for many voters. It comes after President Donald Trump urged GOP officials in Southern states to follow a plan along those lines, adding: “If they have to vote twice, so be it.”
The stunning sequence of events underscores the contempt with which Republican officials have treated the democratic process as they scramble to take advantage of last week’s Supreme Court ruling allowing them to scrap majority-Black districts.
The hurried special session, called by Gov. Kay Ivey (R), comes on the heels of Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision gutting the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Depending on what the legislature decides, Alabama could select a past map that the courts have already found to be a racial gerrymander and that eliminates one of the state’s two Black-majority, Democratic-held districts. Or, it could choose a new, even more gerrymandered one that eliminates both.
Alabama is one of three states — along with Louisiana and Tennessee — now racing to change maps after the SCOTUS ruling. Regardless of how exactly the states gerrymander, the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais means minority voters will face far steeper hurdles to proving that an electoral map unconstitutionally dilutes their voting power, a dangerous blow to decades of progress in minority political representation.
Legal hurdles
Despite holding the special session, Alabama lawmakers cannot yet take the step of enacting different maps because of ongoing litigation. In fact, the state is still bound by a court-ordered agreement to use its current remedial congressional map until 2030.
But in the wake of the Callais ruling, state officials rushed to filerequests asking the courts to allow Alabama to change maps for this year’s elections. One option is to revert to the 6-1 congressional map the state implemented before the court-ordered agreement. The other is to draw a new map in which all seven districts will likely be Republican, eliminating the state’s two majority Black districts.
To this end, Alabama asked SCOTUS on Thursday to expedite consideration of its cert petition and to vacate the order requiring a congressional map with two majority Black districts. In response, Black voters currently challenging that map filed their response, asking the court to deny Alabama’s request because voting is already underway.
Then, in an effort to make changes to its state senate map, Alabama filed an emergency motion Monday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to vacate the block on the 2021 state senate map and to issue a final judgment — or at least temporarily allow the 2021 map to stand — in light of Callais. Alabama said it asked the court to grant the emergency motion to avoid “requiring the State to use a map intentionally drawn to include an additional black-majority district [that] imposes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
Alabama’s emergency motion comes after a district court ruled in August that the state senate map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the provision SCOTUS gutted last week. To comply with that provision, the district court approved a remedial state senate map in November allowing Black voters in the Montgomery area an equal opportunity to elect state senators of their choice.
But Alabama quickly appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit, and litigation is ongoing.
Districts targeted
Though the Callais case challenged a majority-minority congressional district in Louisiana, Alabama had argued against its own court-ordered map on similar legal grounds, making SCOTUS’s ruling last week an opportunity for the GOP-led legislature to begin the process towards redistricting.
On Friday, Alabama Gov. Ivey ordered the special session. Its agenda called for passing legislation to provide for a special primary election for U.S. House of Representatives and Alabama State Senate districts impacted by court rulings.
“By calling the Legislature into a special session, I am ensuring Alabama is prepared should the courts act quickly enough to allow Alabama’s previously drawn congressional and state senate maps to be used during this election cycle,” Ivey said in a statement. “If the court-ordered injunction is lifted, Alabama would revert to the maps drawn by the Legislature for congressional districts in 2023 and state senate districts in 2021.”
The special session is expected to be completed within five days, Ivey said.
If Alabama indeed reverts to the 2023 map, it would likely leave only one Black-majority Democratic congressional district.
But that’s not the only option under consideration.
On Friday, Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter (R) and Alabama Senate President Garlan Gudger Jr. (R) said in a joint statement that they will aim to eliminate both congressional seats currently held by Black Democrats.
“We have a responsibility to give our state a fighting chance to send seven republican members to Congress,” they said. “Control of the U.S. House of Representatives could come down to just a handful of seats, and when the dust settles, the people of Alabama will know that their Legislature stood firm, acted decisively, and did everything within its power to fight for fair representation.”
Voting underway
After Ivey called the special session, a key question remained unanswered: What would happen with this month’s primary election, which had already begun?
There were signs it might be canceled. Over the weekend, Trump, who ignited a mid-decade national redistricting arms race last year by demanding five more Republican seats in Texas, publicly called on Republican-led states to effectively interrupt elections to gerrymander after the Callais ruling.
“We cannot allow there to be an Election that is conducted unconstitutionally simply for the ‘convenience’ of State Legislatures. If they have to vote twice, so be it,” he wrote Sunday night on Truth Social. “We should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done. That is more important than administrative convenience. The byproduct is that the Republicans will receive more than 20 House Seats in the upcoming Midterms!”
The phrase “vote twice” appeared to be a reference to the chaotic situation currently playing out in neighboring Louisiana.
Last week, Gov. Jeff Landry (R) took the shocking, unprecedented step of suspending the state’s May 16 congressional primary election — even though, as in Alabama, some voters had already cast mail ballots.
Landry’s order only impacted congressional seats; other races are continuing as scheduled. Louisiana’s early in-person voting started Saturday. That means voters may have to cast a second ballot in the congressional primary at a later date.
Four lawsuits have been filed challenging Landry’s decision to suspend Louisiana’s active election. In two cases filed in state court, Louisiana judges denied both requests to temporarily block the governor’s order. In the third case, which was filed in federal court, a three-judge panel has been assigned and a hearing is expected to be set. A fourth lawsuit was filed Monday.
Then, Monday afternoon, Alabama Secretary of State Allen announced that the primary would go forward as planned.
“Alabama is proceeding with the May 19, 2026 Primary Election while we await court action in Alabama’s pending redistricting cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals,” he said in a statement. “I encourage all eligible Alabamians to verify their voter registration status using AlabamaVotes.gov and make plans to head to the polls on May 19th.”
Allen offered no indication of what the state planned to do about the primary should the courts rule in its favor. But it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which the rulings would not require nullifying the first vote and holding a do-over under new maps.
