Bill Fails In Initial Push To Move Date Of Next Tuscaloosa Municipal Election

TUSCALOOSA, AL — The date of the City of Tuscaloosa's next municipal election in 2025 will remain unchanged, at least for now, after a proposed bill failed to clear the necessary Senate Committee during this year's Alabama Legislative Session.

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As Patch previously reported in December, the Tuscaloosa City Council unanimously approved the city's legislative agenda for the session, which included one component that would have moved the next municipal election date from March 2025 to May 20, 2025.

SB 300 received a first reading on the Senate floor during the session and was referred to the Senate Committee on Local Legislation, where it failed to gain the necessary momentum and support to be put to a full vote in the Senate chamber.

Simply put, critics have argued that the proposed election date would fall after the end of the spring 2025 semester at the University of Alabama, Stillman College and Shelton State Community College, with finals week typically scheduled for the first week of May. This would ultimately result in much fewer college students around to cast ballots if the date change is approved by the legislature in a future incarnation.

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However, it will once again be up to the Tuscaloosa City Council to send the measure back to Montgomery as part of next year's legislative agenda if they choose to continue the fight.

A grassroots opposition effort — The Andrew Goodman Foundation’s Vote Everywhere UA — has been vocal in its worries over what it views as voter suppression, while also encouraging State Sen. Gerald Allen, a Tuscaloosa Republican who sponsored the bill, to not reintroduce it during the next legislative session in 2023.

"We believe that this is an explicit act of voter disenfranchisement and suppression aimed at reducing the rate of participation of young voters in Tuscaloosa municipal elections," the group said in a letter to Allen this week. "And this is not just conjecture on our part. As Councilman [Lee] Busby explained to his colleagues in a Tuscaloosa City Council meeting, this proposal is specifically designed to discourage 'temporary voters' from casting a ballot."

Indeed, Busby previously said the date change would address a "problem with votes that can't be legally sustained," in addition to expressing the hope that it would help the city avoid costly election challenges where temporary, part-time voters — I.E., college students — have mobilized, but can't sustain an expensive legal battle.

"The timing was the third week in May, is designed to acknowledge the period where most of the part-time, temporary folks are out of town but the full-time permanent residents with kids in school are not out of school or gone on vacation," Busby said in December.

Vote Everywhere UA argued in its letter that with the City of Tuscaloosa seeking to build capital by retaining those who graduate from its universities, the proposed date change for the next municipal election would only serve to undermine students' trust in the community, while also representing a blatant attempt at isolating these students from the Tuscaloosa community.

"If students are not treated as valued citizens while they are in school, how can we expect them to view themselves as valued community members post-graduation?," organizers said. "Although this bill did not progress during the most recent legislative session, we urge you to refrain from reintroducing this bill come next session. We adamantly condemn and oppose this bill in the strongest possible manner. We hope that the Alabama Senate rejects this poorly disguised attempt at voter suppression, and we look forward to contesting this measure in every way possible should it move forward."

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