Alabama holds second primary Tuesday, leading to confusion, concerns about low turnout

Rep. Shomari Figures speaks at an event hosted by the Montgomery Regional Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, July 29 in Montgomery, Ala. Vasha Hunt/AP hide caption

HOPE HULL, Ala. -- Willie Dixon and Mary Gatson are sitting in the fellowship hall of Beulah Primitive Baptist Church in Lowndes County awaiting a Congressional town hall, and discussing the last-minute changes to Alabama's voting landscape.

"Create enough chaos, and people will give up and go home," Dixon predicted.

Voters in parts of Alabama will head to the polls today for the second time this primary season. After the U.S. Supreme Court dismantled a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act when it ruled that it's unconstitutional to draw district lines based on race, Alabama became one of several southern states to rush to redistrict before the mid-term elections to consolidate Republican power.

Less than two weeks before the regular May primary, Alabama's Republican-controlled state legislature reconfigured four of the state's seven districts, reshaping a largely-Black district drawn in response to a court decision that ruled the same map being used this year was discriminatory.

Willie Dixon, left, and Mary Gatson came to hear Alabama's two Black members of Congress speak at a local church on July 30. The ladies are concerned that confusion around congressional boundaries and primary dates may discourage Black voters. Debbie Elliott/NPR hide caption

Dixon thought she was in the same district as before until Gatson told her it changed. Anyone who voted in the first primary here had their votes voided.

"With these two [primaries] coming so close together, I know there will be some people that are not going to show up because they think they've already done it," Dixon said.