Alabama League of Municipalities may seek 1-year delay in city elections

The Alabama League of Municipalities’ executive committee next week is scheduled to consider asking for a one-year delay of municipal elections due to the COVID-19 crisis, the league’s deputy director said today.

The executive committee is expected to vote on Thursday whether to ask the state Legislature to postpone municipal elections scheduled for Aug. 25 of this year until 2021, league Deputy Director Greg Cochran said, listing several reasons for this.

First, the delay of this year’s primary runoffs (for Congressional seats and other elected positions that have runoffs) from March 31 to July 14 could place a hardship on county boards of registrars and companies that supply voting equipment, Cochran said.

The boards of registrars are charged with providing accurate lists of eligible voters, and the movement of the primary election runoff could make doing that more difficult given the time frame between the new primary runoff date and the Aug. 25 municipal election date, Cochran said.

Similarly, he said there would not be much turnaround time for companies that supply voting equipment to retool the voting machines for municipal elections.

Another factor to take into account is that some cities expect they could lose 40 percent of their revenue streams in the next three months due to business shutdowns associated with the COVID-19 crisis, and putting on elections is expensive, Cochran said.

A fourth reason to delay elections for a year is that many poll workers are older residents whose health is more at risk if exposed to the new coronavirus, and they may be more hesitant to volunteer to man the polls in the current health environment. 

If municipal elections were to be delayed for a year, that would leave current elected officials in office for a fifth year. However, Cochran said any elected official who was ready to end their term after four years still would have the option to resign and their position be filled for the fifth year through normal means of filling vacancies.

The staff of the League of Municipalities certainly isn’t trying to protect anyone by delaying the elections, Cochran said. League staff members just think it would be more prudent to delay and avoid problems that could surface if elections were to proceed this year. 

Legislators are scheduled to begin meeting again on April 28 and have until May 18 until their current session ends.