Straight Party Voting Rules

Voters will head to the polls in less than a week, but there is some discrepancy in ballot rules.

There is a place on the ballot for straight party voting. That means you mark whether you want to select all Republican or all Democrat candidates and not have to mark each one. That’s nothing new.
But Secretary of State John Merrill issued a statement recently stating you could mark a straight party ballot and vote for someone from the opposite party if you would like.

One candidate we asked about this says she does not believe it.

” That’s not true…. But I think that might be a tactic to confuse people. No, that is not true at all.”

This is the statement Merrill released about straight party voting:

“…If a voter wishes to vote for any candidate outside the party that they have chosen, they may do so by marking the space next to the candidate’s name. Regardless of whether the voter cast a straight party vote or not, filling in the bubble next to a candidate’s name will be counted as the voter’s choice in that contest.”

In the general election of 2016, about half of the ballots cast in Alabama were straight party ballots.