MONTGOMERY — Republican and Democratic primaries will remain open in Alabama due to a bill requiring party registration to participate in the state's partisan primary elections not getting a vote in the Senate on Thursday.
The bill (HB541) by State Rep. Ernie Yarbrough (R-Trinity) wouldn't have applied to the 2026 elections, but would've gone into effect on January 1, 2027, if passed into law. The bill had already passed the House and a Senate committee.
Thursday was the last day of the 2026 legislative session. Currently, Alabama's primaries are open. However, if one opts to participate in a party's primary, they may participate only in that party's primary runoff.
Yarbrough's bill would've required voters to register with a political party to vote the party's ballot in a primary election or a primary runoff. It would've imposed a 60-day blackout period before a primary election, before which voters could redeclare party affiliation.
Yarbrough told 1819 News his bill dying in the Senate was "obviously disappointing." The bill had the support of the Alabama Republican Party.
"To quote my father, 'A man always does his priorities.' I yearn for the day when the priorities that are Republican and conservative dominate both chambers and that we see a time and day when those things receive the urgent push that the people of our state want them to have," Yarbrough said. "It's important to the Republican Party and the Republican voters of Alabama that we have closed primaries so we do not have people from other party affiliations electing our Republican nominees."
The closed primary bill was on the Senate's list of bills for consideration on Tuesday, but it was never brought up for a vote after hours of filibuster from Democrat and Republican senators on other bills. The House adjourned for the session shortly before the Senate on Thursday at around 5:30 p.m.
"I do think that the Senate was taking it seriously. I don't understand why it was pushed so far down the calendar. It was my understanding that it was initially going to be five or six on the calendar. I don't know what happened to bump it so far down," Yarbrough said. "When that bill was in the House, it was the first bill on the calendar. It is not the case in the Senate. I don't know why that's the case. I also don't understand why we Sine Died when we did. It doesn't make any sense to me. That was a House thing. I don't understand it. It doesn't seem to indicate by doing so that that bill was ever a priority."
State Sen. David Sessions (R-Grand Bay) told 1819 News on Thursday the Senate had been working on a substitute amendment to the bill similar to Oklahoma's closed primaries.
Every two years, political parties in Oklahoma choose whether their primaries will be open or closed to unaffiliated voters.
Sessions said, "I've always made the comment about politics that it is a lot like football and a little bit like farming, there's always next year. There's a lot of stuff we had on the calendars that can certainly wait until next year."
"It's certainly something that wasn't even going to affect this election. Some of the Senators, I'm not saying all, I think there were some that were probably for the bill that passed (the House). There were several that felt like it needed more deliberation and was certainly something that could be worked on before we passed it," he added. "I did get some legal opinions that what they sent out of the House would not hold up if it was challenged. We were trying to get a substitute ready in case we needed it, with something that we felt like didn't exclude voters and gave the parties an opportunity to accept unaffiliated voters or exclude them every two years. The parties would have had that opportunity. I'm sure it's one of those things that will continue to come up. I'd certainly like to see whatever we do to make sure that people have the opportunity to vote in their communities. I think there's a way to get to where the party would like to be and the public would be good with it."
Sessions continued, "As a Republican legislator and part of a Republican supermajority, I think we've done a pretty good job with the state, and I think people will keep rewarding us for that and keep electing a majority Republican House and Senate as long as we continue to keep doing a good job."
State Sen. Pro-Tem Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman) told reporters on Thursday, "there is no doubt" the issue would come up again in the next quadrennium.
"After we started going through that with the leadership of the Republican Party and people calling us back from our districts, we actually got back on track. We were feeling pretty good about moving and making progress," Gudger said. "We had a substitute that we were having today working with the Republican leadership and thought we were all on track. We felt very confident that everybody was on board by the time we got there except for just a few that would hurt them back home they said. Again, every Senator has a vote in their own district, obviously, and he's got to take that vote for the people back home, but I felt pretty confident that we were all going in the right direction."
Gudger continued, "It was one of those that I think the people in the Republican Party pushed that on us to be honest with you. Once we did that, we worked and finagled with that bill, massaged it a little bit. In the end, I think we were kind of ready to get rolling on that," Gudger said. "We're going to bring it back next year, it sounds like. It's going to be obviously, it sounds like one of future Gov. Tuberville's priorities, and we'll be looking at it right up front starting next year."
House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter (R-Rainsville) said the bill passed by the House was a "good bill."
"We passed the closed primaries bill. I thought it was a good bill. I don't know why it waited so long. I don't know. I suspect it will come back. We'll see how that goes," Ledbetter told reporters.
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