Jefferson County Election Officials Consider Offering Absentee Voting On A Weekend
Updated at 9:31 p.m. CT
Jefferson County may allow absentee voting on a Saturday later this month, but county Probate Judge James Naftel said any such move would first need to be authorized by county or state officials.
Posts on social media claim that the county courthouse will be open this Saturday, Oct. 17, for absentee voting, but that isn’t true.
Instead, Naftel said officials are considering expanding voting to include Saturday, Oct. 24. The decision would have to be approved by the Jefferson County Commission or Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill.
Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson said plans were already underway with area churches to transport voters to the courthouse this Saturday when she received word late Wednesday afternoon that those plans were off. Tyson said Circuit Clerk Jacqueline Anderson-Smith canceled the plans because she was overwhelmed.
Reached Wednesday night by phone, Smith said she is awaiting authorization from the commission to open the courthouse on a Saturday.
“I have not received an email from them saying that they’re going to allow the courthouse to open,” she said. “I’m simply waiting to hear from them.”
In the meantime, officials are working to make absentee voting easier in Jefferson County, but it’s been a challenge.
“The volume of absentee voting that we’re seeing is truly unprecedented and we’re doing it in the midst of a pandemic,” Naftel said.
Jefferson County is working to process more than 25,000 absentee ballots and ballot applications, Naftel said. That’s compared to about 10,500 in the 2016 general election.
Anderson-Smith said she’s trying to keep up with the demands of hundreds of voters who walk in daily and hundreds more whose materials arrive by mail.
“Each day we have more and more. I’m trying to catch up,” she said, adding that she has more employees now to hire and train. “If you come in to vote, it is going to take you a couple of hours no matter how well-oiled my machine is. I’m flying a plane and I’m building it as I’m flying it.”
Pressure has been mounting after the state’s top election office intervened last week following complaints of long lines, three-hour wait times and a backlog of mail-in ballots at the county courthouse in downtown Birmingham.
Since then the county has added almost 50 temporary workers and plans to add another 20 in the coming days, Naftel said. These workers will process mail-in ballots, staff phone lines and help with the flow of in-person voting.
But strict requirements for election workers have sparked additional delays.
“Most of the personnel are temporary staff, and so they’ve got to get trained [and] security credentials,” Naftel said. “It’s not as simple as just hiring people and having them start immediately that morning with processing applications.”
But Naftel said the county is making progress toward lowering the average wait time for in-person absentee voting to about two hours, and they expect to finish processing the backlog of mail-in ballots by this weekend.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson and Circuit Clerk Jacqueline Anderson-Smith.
Review of decision not to award Space Command to Alabama inconclusive, with Trump reversal expected
The inspector general's report, issued Friday, said this was in part due to a lack of access to senior defense officials during the Biden administration, when the review began.
Families say school civil rights investigations have stalled after federal cuts
The U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights investigates discrimination in schools. It recently lost more than 40% of its staff.
Word of the Week: A brief history of Coachella — the festival and the place
When you think of Coachella, you probably picture the festival. But there's much more to know about the place it calls home.
How psychiatric patients get caught in a cycle of homelessness and spotty care
Montana is investing $300 million to help those with severe mental illness from cycling through ERs, state psychiatric facilities, jails and homelessness. Advocates say they also need stable housing.
Photos: Scientists trace a butterfly migration route that is millions of years old
Scientists have recently mapped the painted lady butterfly's annual flight from equatorial Africa to northern Europe and back, the world's longest butterfly migration. In Constant Bloom, photographer Lucas Foglia documents the journey.
Why is Alabama’s workforce participation rate so low? And what’s being done to improve it?
While Alabama boasts an unemployment rate that is among the lowest in the country, its workforce participation rate consistently lags the national average, meaning a large portion of Alabamians are neither employed nor actively seeking work. This has raised concerns both about barriers to employment for individuals and about the state’s economic future.
