Five Days to Apply. Twelve Days to Vote.

Wall of Shame — Today: Coca-Cola United

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. United (Birmingham) has put $2,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account. Figures then voted no on no-tax-on-tips and no-tax-on-overtime for the beverage workers the bottler employs. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

TWELVE DAYS, AND ONE THING LEFT THAT HAS A DEADLINE

Registration closed Monday night. That door is shut and nothing reopens it.

There is exactly one instrument left in this election with a hard date on it, and most people reading this have never used it. Absentee voting.

If you are going to vote absentee by mail, your application has to be in the hands of your county Absentee Election Manager by Tuesday, August 4. Received. Not postmarked, not dropped in a box on the fourth, not mailed on the fourth. In the office.

That is five days from today, and it is the last deadline in this election that arrives before the election.

WHO CAN ACTUALLY DO THIS

Alabama is not a no-excuse absentee state. You need a reason, and the reasons are specific:

You will be out of the county on election day. You are ill or have a physical disability that prevents a trip to the polls. You work a shift that overlaps ten or more hours with the polls being open. You are a caregiver for someone confined to home. You are a student enrolled outside the county. You are in jail awaiting trial, or a member of the military, or living overseas.

One correction worth making, because it circulates every cycle. Being over sixty-five is not by itself a reason. Voters over sixty-five who cannot make it to the polls qualify under the illness-or-disability provision, not on age alone.

If none of those apply to you, then August 11 is a Tuesday and the polls are open from seven in the morning until seven at night. Bring photo identification.

THE DATES, PLAINLY

Tuesday, August 4 — mailed absentee applications must be received by the county Absentee Election Manager.

Thursday, August 6 — last day to hand-deliver an absentee application.

Monday, August 10 — a hand-returned absentee ballot must be back in that office by 5 p.m.

Tuesday, August 11 — polls open seven to seven. A mailed absentee ballot must arrive by noon.

Your Absentee Election Manager is at the county courthouse. The office is listed at AlabamaVotes.gov along with the application form.

WHY ANY OF THIS MATTERS MORE HERE THAN IT USUALLY DOES

Observers quoted in the Alabama Gazette expect turnout in this Republican primary to come in under thirty thousand votes across thirteen counties.

Six Republicans are on the ballot. There is no runoff. Whoever finishes first is the nominee, whether he gets forty percent or twenty-two.

Run that arithmetic. Under thirty thousand votes, split six ways, and the winning number lands somewhere around nine to twelve thousand. In a district of roughly seven hundred thousand people, twelve thousand voters are going to pick the person who almost certainly holds this seat in Congress.

A few hundred absentee ballots that never got applied for is not a rounding error in a race like that. It is a real share of the margin.

THE INCUMBENT'S FILE IS STILL CLOSED

Nothing has changed here since Monday and we are not going to pad it out.

The House is in a district work period. Roll call 283, taken July 23, is still the last recorded vote the Clerk has posted — we checked again this morning. Shomari Figures's voting record going into November is finished being written.

We spent the last week of July documenting the two votes that closed it, with the roll call numbers, the vote counts and the Republican-attached riders that Democrats cited as their reason, stated up front rather than buried. It is all in the archive at take2back.com and it will still be there in November.

WHERE THIS STANDS

Twelve days.

The registration list is closed and final. The absentee window closes in five. The incumbent's record is closed. Outside money has decided this seat is worth eight times more to Republicans than to Democrats, and the people who spend money for a living do not do that on sentiment.

Everything that could be decided by somebody else has been decided. What is left is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is people showing up.

If you need an absentee ballot, apply this week. If you do not, mark August 11 and bring your ID.