The Alabama Republican Party has set June 25 as the date to hear challenges to election results in four races from the May 24 primary.
The races are in Senate District 27 in east Alabama, House District 2 in north Alabama, and House districts 28 and 29 in northeast Alabama.
In Senate District 27, Auburn City Councilman Jay Hovey won by a single vote over Sen. Tom Whatley of Auburn.
In House Districts 28 and 29, the second-place finishers filed challenges because some voters were assigned to vote in the wrong districts in Etowah County, a problem acknowledged by state, county, and party officials.
In House District 2, Jason Spencer Black received 14 more votes than Kimberly Butler to claim second place and a spot in a runoff against Ben Harrison.
The state GOP candidate committee, a 21-member panel, will hear the challenges in the four races. The candidate committee met Sunday to set the date.
Contests were filed in five legislative races from the May 24 primary. But the candidate committee decided that a challenge in House District 1 did not meet the threshold for a hearing. That means incumbent Rep. Phillip Pettus of Killen claims the nomination.
Rep. Gil Isbell of Gadsden filed a challenge in House District 28, which he lost by 219 votes to former state Rep. Mack Butler of Gadsden.
Etowah County Commissioner Jamie Grant of Reece City filed a challenge in District 29, which he lost to Mark Gidley by 74 votes.
Steve Reagan of Gadsden, a would-be candidate in District 29, also filed a challenge because of the conflicting information he received. Reagan qualified to run in District 29, then withdrew after being told he lived in District 28. But when Reagan went to vote on election day, he was handed a ballot for District 29.
Isbell and Grant are asking for the party to hold a new primary. They initially wanted that to coincide with the June 21 runoff, which will be held in every county because there are statewide races involved. But the June 25 date to hear the election contests rules out any chance of that.
Secretary of State John Merrill said last week that state law precluded the Republican party from holding a new primary. Today he said the law allows the party to do so if it determines the circumstances justify that.
“(The law) says that if you cannot reach a definitive conclusion about who the nominee is then at that point the authority to call another election is an option for the party if they choose to go that direction,” Merrill said.
Asked today why he said last week that the law prohibited that, Merrill said he meant that he did not think the circumstances in Districts 28 and 29 would meet the standard to justify a second primary.
“There’s no evidence of any circumstances meriting that today,” Merrill said. “That’s the reason I told you I know they can’t do it.”
But Merrill did not rule out more information coming to light that could result in the party calling a new primary for the races in question.
Merrill and other officials have previously said they do not know how many voters were affected by the district assignment mistakes in Etowah County.
Merrill said today that his office will pay for Etowah County to hire a vendor to sort out the problems with voter assignments. Merrill said he expects that work to take about a month after the contract is finalized.
Merrill and Etowah County Probate Judge Scott Hassell have previously said in a joint statement that the problems resulted from the failure of the Etowah County Board of Registrars to reassign voters after the reapportionment plan approved by the Legislature last year.
Aside from filing an election challenge with the state Republican party in Senate District 27, Whatley also had the option for requesting a recount in the three counties in the district, Lee, Russell, and Tallapoosa. Recount requests are made to the county GOP organizations.
The Lee County and Russell County Republican party chairs said no recount request has been filed. Efforts to find out if a request has been filed in Tallapoosa County have been unsuccessful. Merrill said the deadline for a request passed last Friday at noon.
Whatley has not responded to calls from AL.com since the primary.
