Alabama League of Municipalities delays vote on idea to postpone city elections

The executive committee of the Alabama League of Municipalities today elected to wait until June to decide if the group wants to seek a delay in city elections later this year due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Elections for most municipalities in the state are now scheduled for Aug. 25.

Greg Cochran, deputy director of the League of Municipalities, said his office had begun getting requests from cities seeking a delay for city elections. He said last week that staff members would ask the executive committee to consider requesting a delay in elections until 2021. But today the committee felt it was too early to make that call, Cochran said.

The committee wants to wait until June and see whether a statewide stay-at-home order is still in place and how the overall situation has changed by that time, he said.

If the committee felt a delay was needed at that time, it would ask the governor to postpone municipal elections by executive order if a state of emergency still exists.

Also, it’s possible that elections could be delayed in only certain parts of the state, depending on the situation at that time, he said. Tuscaloosa had its municipal election delayed after a tornado caused major damage in the city in 2011.

There are several reasons a delay might be warranted, Cochran said last week.

First, the delay of this year’s primary runoffs for Congressional seats and other 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 Board of Registrars is 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.

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

Another factor 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 third 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 filled for the fifth year through normal means of filling vacancies.