Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, are officially on the ballot in Alabama’s general election in November.
The Alabama Democratic Party filed paperwork to put Harris on the ballot on Friday, after the Democratic National Convention concluded on Thursday. The Alabama Republican Party filed its paperwork on Thursday, just over a month after the Republican National Convention concluded.
The deadline for voting was Friday, but leaders of both parties said the timing was normal.
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John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, said Friday that they always file their paperwork on the day of the deadline or the day before in case they need to make changes or additions to the choices on the lower ballots.
“This is normal for us,” he said.
Alabama Democratic Party Executive Director Tom Miro said before the Democrats filed their paperwork on Friday that they had communicated with the DNC and the campaign ahead of the deadline to get the certification and names of electors from the Secretary of State’s office before the deadline.
“We have a plan that they are happy with,” he said. “We will submit it today. And yes, we are not worried about that at all. There are people preparing for that right now.”
The original deadline for voting was August 15, before the start of the Democratic National Convention. Secretary of State Wes Allen said this spring that Democratic Party candidates would not appear on the ballot if the August 15 deadline was not met.
Democrats has sponsored a bill to move the deadline to August 23. The legislature passed the law and Governor Kay Ivey signed it in May. The Democrats held a virtual convention earlier this month to nominate Harris should there be problems accessing the ballot papers after the party conference.
Alabama has voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1980. The last contested presidential race in the state was this year, when Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic candidate President Jimmy Carter by just over 17,000 votes out of 1.3 million cast.
