The Talladega City Council certified the results of the 2023 election, set a date of Sept. 19 for the runoff for mayor and took up a handful of other action items during a called meeting Tuesday afternoon.
In addition to certifying the ballots that had already been counted, the council also received the provisional ballots from the board of registrars and added those to the final tally.
According to Registrar Cookie Adair, there were a total of nine provisional ballots total from last week’s election; of those, three were to be counted and added to the final tally.
Needless to say, none of the three provisionals affected the outcome of the general election at all.
Adair explained that there are several reasons for a ballot to be labelled provisional, including instances where people had recently moved into the city but not reregistered, not having identification at the polling place or not being on the poll list for whatever reason.
Of the three provisionals that were eventually counted, one came from Ward 1, one from Ward 3 and one was cast absentee for Ward 2. Two of the votes for mayor went to Ashton Hall, the third to Jerry Cooper, who will face each other in the runoff next month. Overall winners Steve Dickerson and Sandra Beavers, for council and city board of education, respectively, picked up one more vote Tuesday, as did Vickey Robinson-Hall and Allison Edwards in Ward 2.
Joe Power, who lost his bid for a second term on the council for Ward 3, picked up one additional vote, but it was nowhere near enough to close the 160-vote margin for challenger Hugh Sims.
The absentee provisional ballot had to be counted by hand, since the voting machine used to add to the provisionals to the total was not calibrated to handle absentee ballots.
The final tallies approved by the council Tuesday were Hall, 728; Cooper, 538; Vann Caldwell, 151, and Michael Martin, 76, for mayor, with 20 people not choosing a candidate in this race. Although Hall got the most votes, he got less than 50 percent of the total, putting him in a runoff with Cooper.
People who did not register to vote in the general election will have an opportunity to register by Monday, Sept. 4, to vote in the Sept. 19 runoff.
Incumbents Jake Montgomery and Chuck Roberts, representing Wards 3 and 4, respectively, on the school board were unopposed and were certified as elected Tuesday.
Dickerson defeated Erica P. Graham to succeed Dr. Horace Patterson for Ward 1 on the council by 288 to 93, and Beavers defeated Duaney Player and Dixie Bonner without a runoff for a second term representing Ward 1 on the school board by 220 to 119 to 41.
Incumbent Ward 2 Councilwoman Hall bested Tonta Draper 235 to 36, and Edwards beat Kelly Adams for school board 206 to 62.
Sims beat Power 224 to 64, while incumbent (and current council president) Betty Spratlin defeated Terry McKee 218 to 77,
Trae Williams was reelected to council Ward 5 without a runoff, defeating Martha Jordan and Darius Williams by 178 to 73 to 21.
The race for Ward 5 on the school board was the only one of this cycle so far that was even remotely close, with Megan Carpenter defeating incumbent James Braswell 137 to 128.
Both Adair and Talladega County Probate Judge Chad Joiner praised the work done by City Clerk Joanna Medlen in making sure that the election ran smoothly, who was handling her first municipal election in that capacity.
Absentee ballots revisited
Virtually every municipal election in Talladega has been followed by a controversy of some sort or another involving absentee ballots. In spite of the small number of overall ballots cast and the lopsided margins of victory for most of the winning candidates, 2023 was no exception.
The day after the election, Bonner wrote a letter to Secretary of State Wes Allen and Jeff Elrod, head of the election division in that office, alleging misconduct by Medlen and personnel in her office.
“On Wednesday, I called you to report that I had concerns about the way the Talladega City elections were handled,” Bonner wrote. “I reported to you that during our municipal election on Tuesday, the absentee ballots precinct counted and tallied all of the votes, which included running them through the voting machine and the inspector and workers all signed off on the tabulation receipt around 1:30 p.m. Two people told different ones of us thar they had finished around that time … All of my research yield the same information, that is, absentee ballots must be tallied after all the polls closed at 7 p.m. along with all of the other polls.”
Although the state code is maddeningly vague, Elrod confirmed that the law has in fact been amended since the last municipal election in Talladega in 2019.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an emergency rule enacted that allowed the inspection of supporting documents for absentee ballots to begin at 7 a.m. on election day. Because there were so many absentee ballots because of COVID, they were allowed to start going through them earlier. Previously, they couldn’t start checking the supporting documents until noon. They can even start running the tabulations after noon, but you can’t publish the results until after the polls close. Then the state legislature came in and made all of those changes permanent after 2021. The way the statute is interpreted and all of the guidance issued by this office says you can do everything except publish the results before the polls close. If they’re finished by 1 p.m., that’s fine, as long as the results are not published until after 7 p.m., no laws have been broken.”
Also Tuesday, the council:
— Approved the poll worker list.
— Nominated former Councilman David Street as one of the city’s nominees for the county Board of Equalization by a vote of 3-1. Patterson abstained and Power voted no. Former Councilman Ricky Simpson is the city’s other nominee.
— Announced that the canvass meeting for the runoff election will be Sept. 26.
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