Voter turnout increased in Alabama’s 2026 midterm elections, with 1.7 million Alabamians casting their ballots last Tuesday. Data from the Secretary of State’s office showed 43.9% of registered voters cast their ballots in this year’s election, up from the 38.9% turnout for 2022’s midterm election.

Voter turnout particularly surged among Democrat voters, with Democrat turnout nearly doubling from 2022 and increasing their percentage of the vote in all of Alabma’s counties. Republican voter turnout decreased in most counties.

Still, Republicans held on to power in the state, with Republican gubernatorial nominee and current U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville beating out Democratic nominee Doug Jones. Republicans also won all other executive branch offices on the ballot this year, including lieutenant governor and attorney general. 

In the state’s federal races, republicans won five out of the seven U.S. House of Representatives seats the state holds, as well as the one U.S. Senate seat on this year’s ballot. Republicans also held on to their supermajority in the state legislature. 

Nevertheless, Alabama Democrats saw significant victories last week. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures won his race in Alabama’s District 2 against Republican and former state Rep. Rhett Marques. A close race between Figures and Marques came after state legislatures redrew the district’s boundaries in May to benefit Republicans. 

Meanwhile, in the state’s Legislature, four seats flipped from Republican to Democrat, including three seats representing North Alabama districts. In House District 25, a district representing Huntsville, Democrat Allison Montgomery beat incumbent Republican Rep. Phillip Rigsby to become the state’s first openly transgender legislator. 

While Tuberville won the state’s highest office for Republicans, he earned the fewest number of votes of any major Alabama Republican on the ballot on Tuesday. Tuberville earned roughly 872,000 votes — no other Republican running for statewide office this year earned less than 900,000 votes. Jones, meanwhile, earned roughly 806,000 votes, making this year’s governor’s race the closest race since 2002. 

Alabama top stories in brief

Alabama executes Michael Shannon Taylor in third execution of year

• Alabama executed Michael Shannnon Taylor last week.
• Taylor was convicted for the 1991 murders of Ivan and Lucille Moore in Gadsden.
• Taylor was executed by lethal injection. Taylor’s attorneys filed a request for a stay of execution with the Alabama Supreme Court and another appeal with the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals last week arguing the state could not execute him via lethal injection because he had opted into nitrogen gas executions under a 2018 law. The courts denied this request.
• Earlier this year, a federal court issued a permanent injunction blocking the state from using nitrogen gas in executions. 
• Taylor’s execution is the third the state has performed this year. Alabama was one of three states that performed executions last Thursday, alongside Florida and Indiana. 

Alabamians vote to approve four amendments

• Alabama voters approved all four constitutional amendments that were on the ballot during last week’s election.
• Amendment 1, which established protocol for holding special elections for lieutenant governor vacancies, passed with 65.4% of the vote.
• Amendment 2, which laid out policies for local public school districts to merge, passed with 50.9% of the vote — the slimmest margin of any of the amendments on this year’s ballot.
• Amendment 3, which requires local school boards to adopt policies requiring daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and sanctioning student-led prayer, passed with 62.6% of the vote.
• Amendment 4, which requires the Star-Spangled Banner to be played weekly in public schools, passed with 58.6% of the vote.

Lowndes County Commission face second lawsuit for data center tax breaks

• The community group Protect Lowndes County and the Alabama Rivers Alliance last week filed a lawsuit against the Lowndes County Commission. This is the second lawsuit filed against the commission over tax breaks they approved for the state’s largest data center development, known as Project Red Clay.
• Protect Lowndes County and the Alabama Rivers Alliance allege the commission violated Alabama’s Open Meetings Act and Open Records Act by voting on the tax abatements on Oct. 13 when the vote was not listed on the meeting’s agenda. They also allege that commission members also discussed the project without using their microphones, leaving the public unable to hear the discussions.
• Lowndes County residents filed another lawsuit against the commission in October.
• San Francisco-based Lambda Inc. announced last week that it will be operating the data center, which is being developed by Cloverleaf Infrastructure. 

Mobile mayor says fraud protocol not followed ahead of $14.7 million scam

• Mobile Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis said city employees did not follow protocol when they processed a $14.7 million fraudulent payment to a scammer posing as contractors working on the city’s $300 million Regions Arena project.
• Cheriogotis said the city’s Finance Department had created a multilayer verification process for changes to vendor bank accounts in August, after the department had caught a separate and unrelated $1 million fraud attempt in August. However, he said employees failed to follow that protocol when they issued the fraudulent payment on Oct. 2.
• “There were opportunities after the written protocols were put into place to stop the transaction from happening, and it wasn’t. It’s frustrating and it will always be,” Cheriogotis said.
• The FBI is now investigating the city. The payment is one of the largest publicly documented fraudulent vendor payment scams to ever affect a U.S. city. One employee has been fired, while two others are on paid administrative leave while investigations are underway.

Articles you may have missed

• Fall is in full swing and so is fall bird migration. Check out this guide to what birds you can expect to pass through Alabama this winter and how you can get in on the birdwatching fun. 

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