The Alabama Republican Party is facing another challenge to the results from a race in the May 24 primary.
Kimberly Butler of Florence, who fell 14 votes short of making a runoff in Alabama House District 2, has filed an affidavit with the party requesting a new runoff.
Butler said she has affidavits from 42 voters in two precincts who were wrongly assigned to vote in House District 1 who said they would have voted for her if they had been correctly assigned to District 2.
Lauderdale County Probate Judge Will Motlow said 70 voters who voted in the May 24 Republican primary were wrongly assigned to House District 1 by the county’s board of registrars. Motlow said they were voters who lived in District 1 during the last election cycle. But the district lines changed under the new map approved by the Legislature last year as part of the reapportionment required after every census. The voters should have been reassigned to District 2 but were not.
The voters who were wrongly assigned voted at the St. James United Methodist Church and Atlas Church of Christ precincts in Lauderdale County, Motlow said.
Ben Harrison led the May 24 primary and Jason Black finished second, 14 votes ahead of Butler.
Harrison then won the June 21 runoff, receiving 4,308 votes, 56 percent, to 3,443 for Black, 44 percent.
In her affidavit, Butler says the party should declare the runoff null and hold a new one between her and Harrison.
“I think it’s important to remember that this is not about me and I’m not even the number one victim in this,” Butler said. “This is about getting an accurate and true election.”
If the results stand, Harrison wins the seat for House District 2, which includes parts of Lauderdale and Limestone counties. There is no Democratic or Libertarian candidate on the ballot for the Nov. 8 general election. The winner succeeds longtime state Rep. Lynn Greer, R-Rogersville, who did not seek another term.
Harrison said today he would not comment on Butler’s election contest until it is resolved.
The state Republican Party acknowledged receiving the contest. In a statement, the party said state Chair John Wahl is recusing himself. Wahl chairs the 21-member candidate committee, which hears election contests.
“As ALGOP Chairman John Wahl has served on committees with both parties involved, he will be fully recusing himself from all matters related to this contest. ALGOP Senior Vice Chairman John Skipper will act in his place,” the party said in a statement.
The candidate committee has been busy since the May 24 primary. It heard election contests from the primary in House District 28 and House District 29, where voters were also assigned to the wrong districts. Those contests were filed by second-place finishers in the two races and a former candidate who received incorrect information about the district he lived in. The party denied the contests and upheld the results of the primary.
The candidate committee also heard a contest in Senate District 27. At a June 25 hearing, the committee declared a tie in the race between incumbent Sen. Tom Whatley of Auburn and Auburn City Councilman Jay Hovey. The committee arrived at the tie by counting a provisional ballot that had previously been excluded. The party announced it would break the tie with a coin flip.
On July 1, the committee reconsidered at Hovey’s request. Whatley withdrew that morning before the committee met. The committee proceeded with its meeting and rescinded its decision to count the tying ballot because the voter was not registered. Hovey won the nomination.
Butler said she went door-to-door in the two precincts to gather the information for her election challenge.
“I took affidavits and a notary and knocked on the door of all of these people and asked them had they been given the right ballot how would they have voted,” Butler said. “And so I have proof not only that the election was wrong, but I also can tell you how it should have turned out.
“To me it’s very black and white. They ran the wrong runoff and they have to do it again.”
Butler said she expected to do well in the neighborhoods where voters were wrongly assigned because they are near where she lives.
Butler said she does not think anything was intentionally done wrong to skew the election but said the mistakes should be corrected. She said it’s important in the wake of complaints about how the 2020 presidential election turned out.
“As Alabamians we kept saying over and over, look, I can’t tell you what happens in Pennsylvania, I can’t tell you what happens in Georgia. I can’t tell you want happens in Arizona,” Butler said. “But I can tell you in the state of Alabama, we have accurate elections.
“And after this happened, I don’t feel like I can say that anymore. And so it’s important to me that this is fixed and we have the true outcome of the election be the right outcome. Otherwise, people are going to start losing faith in the number one place to vote in the United States, which is Alabama.”
Black, the second-place finisher, said he understands Butler’s reason for filing the contest but does not like her chances based on the party’s decisions in other disputes this year.
“It’s going to be very interesting,” Black said. “I do not think that she stands a chance. I think that the precedents were set in the past couple of weeks with the ones that we had across the state. I think it will follow suit.”
Lauderdale County Probate Judge Motlow said the board of registrars had a difficult task and did not have the most up-to-date Geographic Information System to reassign voters with the new map.
“There’s some companies that have some GIS mapping software that they will come in and help you,” Motlow said. “We haven’t taken advantage of that. It’s currently on an agenda at an upcoming county commission meeting to discuss obtaining some services like that to help our board of registrars.
“They’re basically operating on paper maps doing the best they can with what they have. And I’m not trying to make excuses because definitely a mistake was made. I’m not trying to shy away from that.”
Motlow declined to comment on how the party should handle Butler’s contest. He said he wanted the public to know that mistakes were made and voters were assigned to the wrong district.
“It was important to me to be transparent about it and not try to shy away from it, to be honest with the public about what happened,” Motlow said. “But just to present the facts. What the party does with those facts, that’s their decision to make.”
