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Who are on the ballots for the Democrat and Republican primary runoff elections on Tuesday June 21? Where do I vote? When can I vote?

Heres a quick guide to help you find the information you need to answer those questions and links to information about some of the statewide candidates and one congressional runoff (5th District).

Who to cast your ballot for is your call.

When are polls open: Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.

How do I find out where Im supposed to vote?: Go to this site through the Alabama Secretary of States Office if you are unsure.

Absentee ballots: The deadline to request an absentee ballot has already passed, but if you have one already, June 17 is the last day to return absentee ballots by hand to the Absentee Election Manager in your county. Absentee ballots returned by mail must be received by the Absentee Election Manager no later than noon on Tuesday, June 21 (runoff day).

Voters eligible to vote pursuant to the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Voting Act have until June 21, 2022 to postmark an absentee ballot.

Who and what are on the ballots? Here is a link to runoff ballots around the state.

The vote in the June 21 runoff will determine who will represent each party in the Nov. 8 General Election for scores of local and statewide offices. Those in the runoff did not garner more than 50 percent of the vote in fields of three or more candidates during the May 24 primary.

Go here for AL.coms complete coverage of Election 2022.

Here are the six statewide races with runoffs:

U.S. Senate

The Alabama U.S. Senate race will determine who will replace retiring longtime Sen. Richard Shelby.

Katie Britt, Shelbys former Chief of Staff who also served as CEO of the Business Council, led U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks of Huntsville in a six-candidate race on May 24. She got 44.75% to Brooks 29.15%.

The winner of the Britt and Brooks runoff will represent the Republican Primary in the November General election, facing Democrat Will Boyd, who is a pastor, and the Libertarian candidate, John Sophocleus, a former Auburn University professor.

Governor

In the Democratic Primary for Alabama governor retired educator Yolanda Flowers, of Birmingham, will face state senator and attorney Malika Sanders Fortier of Selma. Flowers got 33.87% of the vote in the May 24 primary and Fortier got 32.52% in a crowded field.

The winner will face Republican incumbent Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who won the May 24 GOP primary race without the need for a runoff against a field of eight opponents, and Libertarian candidate Dr. James Jimmy Blake, a former member of Birmingham City Council.

Secretary of State: Republican candidates State Rep. Wes Allen of Troy, and State Auditor Jim Zeigler will face off in the runoff. Zeigler got 42.69% of the vote in the May 24 primary and Allen got 39.7%. The winner of the Republican Primary faces Democrat Pamela J. Laffitte, and Libertarian candidate Jason Matt Shelby.

The winner will replace Secretary of State John Merrill, who could not run again due to term limits.

State auditor: Jefferson County pastor Stan Cooke and state representative and business owner Andrew Sorrell of Muscle Shoals will face off in the runoff. Sorrell got 39.46% of the vote in the May primary and Cooke 32.79%. The winner of the runoff will face Libertarian candidate Leigh LaChine in the Nov. 8 General election. No Democrats ran for this office.

The winner will replace State Auditor Jim Zeigler, who is term-limited and is running for Secretary of State.

Public Service Commission Place 1: Commissioner Jeremy Oden, who is seeking another term, will face former state and federal prosecutor Brent Woodall in the Republican Primary. Oden got 34.3% of the vote in the May primary and Woodall got 30.9%. The winner will face Libertarian Ron Bishop in the Nov. 8 General Election. No Democrats are running for this seat.

Public Service Commission Place 2: Commissioner Chip Beeker, who is running for another term, will face Robert L. McCollum in the Republican Primary. Beeker got 43.1% of the vote in the May primary while McCollum got 35.84%. The winner will face Libertarian candidate Laura Lane in the Nov. 8 General Election. No Democrats entered the race.

5th Congressional District (for voters in Huntsville/north Alabama)

Madison County Commission Madison County Commission Chairman Dale Strong will face former Huntsville City Schools Superintendent and former Assistant Army Secretary Casey Wardynski in the June 21 runoff for the seat being vacated by Rep. Mo Brooks, who is running for U.S. Senate.

In the primary last month, Strong won 45% of the vote in a six-candidate field while Wardynski was second with 23%. The winner will face Democrat Kathy Warner-Stanton and Libertarian Phillip PJ Greer in the Nov. 8 General Election.

More here:
Election 2022: Where, when to vote in Alabama primary runoffs, sample ballots, and more - AL.com

As four Republican gubernatorial hopefuls consider their options to try and remain in the race, one election expert has floated an alternative path available to them.

Following the disqualification of former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, businessman Perry Johnson, financial adviser Michael Markey and businesswoman Donna Brandenburg from the Aug. 2 primary ballot, each has sought various legal remedies to restore their candidacies.

To date, none has succeeded, most recently with a federal judge denying Johnsons last-ditch effort. Craig, meanwhile, has announced hes started a write-in campaign.

The four were tossed off of the ballot after the Bureau of Elections (BOE) released a report last month detailing an unprecedented number of fraudulent signatures on their petitions.That ruling was then upheld when the Board of State Canvassers (BSC) deadlocked along party lines.

That leaves five candidates running for the GOP nomination: Ryan Kelley who was arrested last week on charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection; Garrett Soldano, a chiropractor; businessman Kevin Rinke; right-wing personality Tudor Dixon; and the Rev. Ralph Rebandt. The winner will take on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Nov. 8.

Steven Liedel is a former counsel for Gov. Jennifer Granholm whos now with the Lansing-based Dykema law firm in Lansing, specializing in election law. Hes noted that Michigan law does provide another path to getting ones name on the ballot that does not require petition signatures.

Liedel, who represented Carol Bray of Haslett in her challenge to 6,000 of Perrys signatures, says candidates could seek a nomination from one of the five minor political parties; U.S. Taxpayers Party of Michigan, Working Class Party, Libertarian Party of Michigan, Green Party of Michigan and the Natural Law Party.

ZERO valid petition signatures required, tweeted Liedel. These parties select their nominees for governor at conventions held by August 2nd and simply notify the Secretary of State of their selections for placement on ballot.

Liedel told the Michigan Advance that since these GOP candidates had issues getting valid petition signatures, mounting a write-in campaign like Craig is doing may not be the most efficient path to the ballot.

What are their options if theyre not on the ballot as one of the candidates for the Republican nominations? said Liedel. A write-in to become the Republican nominee, if you get more write-in votes than one of the folks that appear on the ballot; go get 12,000 valid signatures from voters [by July 21] and appear on the general election ballot as an independent candidate without party affiliation; or much like Gary Johnson did, seek the nomination of one of the other political parties.

Gary Johnson was a former Republican governor of New Mexico who became the Libertarian Party nominee for president of the United States in 2012 and again in 2016.

Theyve all said that theyre interested in being governor and they have ideas that they think should be advanced, said Liedel. And so those are the three paths that they have at this point.

Liedel said that of those three options, seeking a minor party nomination presents the fewest technical obstacles, especially considering that a run for an independent spot on the ballot requires 12,000 valid signatures, just 3,000 less than they needed to get on the ballot as a major-party candidate.

If past performance is an indicator of future results, they might have trouble qualifying with the lower 12,000 signature requirements that are applicable to an independent candidate in terms of securing the nomination of another party, he said.

Messages seeking comment were sent to the Johnson, Craig, Markey and Brandenberg campaigns, but were not returned.

He acknowledged that the candidates themselves may have no interest in affiliating themselves with another party, and that the parties themselves would have to be interested in having one of them as their standard bearer on a ballot in November.

Its not something that they can control on their own, Liedel said. Youd have to have a willing party willing to nominate you, and you have to be willing to be affiliated with that party.

However, he said if those ideological differences could be overcome, their names would be on the ballot for their supporters, while the minor parties would receive wider recognition.

Those minor party candidates are at least interested in continuing their minor party status, which means they have to get a certain percentage of the vote in the race for governor to qualify for the next election cycle, said Liedel. So the parties could have an interest in at least maintaining their minor party status and potentially achieving major party status.

Regardless of whether any of the disqualified candidates have a desire to seek such a nomination, Liedel says it remains an option that contradicts the claims being made in some of the court challenges.

I think that several of them, and Mr. [Perry] Johnson in particular, were arguing in court that there was no alternative for them to seek the office and no other mechanism for folks that wanted to support them, claiming somehow that they were being disenfranchised, said Liedel. And, you know, that definitely was not the case.

More here:
Disqualified GOP gubernatorial candidates have options to get on the ballot Michigan Advance - Michigan Advance

Jesse Powell, co-founder and chief executive at crypto exchange Kraken, has responded to a recent New York Times article that said he started a culture war within the company as he questioned the use of preferred pronouns, debated who could use racial slurs and called American women brainwashed.

The controversy swirled as major cryptocurrencies crashed, while several crypto companies announced layoff plans.

The woke activist movement just ignores the fact that we have a business to run, and we have a bigger mission than somebodys individual personal preferences being met, Powell said in an interview with Fox Business Friday.

The New York Times hit piece completely cherry-picked little snippets of text out of weeks worth of conversations and reconstructed their own sentences in this hit piece. A complete misrepresentation of what actually happened. Obviously I dont think women are any less intelligent than men, Powell said in a separate interview with Fox News on the same day.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Powell, in an April discussion in one of the companys internal Slack groups, said that the debate over womens mental abilities was unsettled, and most American ladies have been brainwashed in modern times.

Powell made the comments after a Kraken employee in the Slack group posted a video, which featured two women who said they preferred $100 in cash over a bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.76%, while the cryptocurrency was trading at around $40,000 then, the New York Times reported. But this is how female brain works, the employee wrote then, according to the New York Times article.

See also: Celsius abruptly cancels AMA session as company navigates very difficult challenges

Powell also once told employees that he didnt believe they should choose their own pronouns, and in a separate scenario, started a discussion on Slack about who could use the N-word, according to the New York Times article.

In respect to the article published by the New York Times, we consider it to be an unfair characterization of events based on inaccurate assumptions formed by taking selectively picked comments out of context, a spokesperson for Kraken told MarketWatch late Friday. Every Krakenite is unique. We welcome and appreciate what makes us different, but all should receive equal respect.

Kraken this week published a document titled Kraken Culture Explained, which highlighted the companys libertarian views among other things. A previous version was shared with employees earlier and those who disagreed could quit and enroll in a program that would offer them four months of pay, the New York Times reported.

About 30 people cited culture or mission-related reasons for recent resignation, Powell told Fox Business on Friday.The company recently had about 3,200 employees, according to Powells tweet.

Kraken said it does not foresee adjusting its hiring plan and hasover 500 roles to fillfor the rest of the year, despite its competitors, Coinbase COIN, +0.33% and Crypto.com, announcing layoffs.

Visit link:
Obviously I dont think women are any less intelligent than men, Kraken CEO says, after New York Times report said he called American women...

~by Janice Harbaugh for GreeneCountyNewsOnline

Just two weeks after learning the price tag on a new HVAC system at the courthouse has grown to $3.4 million, the Greene County supervisors learned of the need for a new communications tower for law enforcement. The price tag on that necessary infrastructure improvement is nearly $2.8 million.

During the supervisors regular June 13 meeting, John Marckres of Unplugged Wireless and Chad Gappa of Motorola Solutions spoke about the countys need for better communications with the Iowa Statewide Interoperable Communications System (ISICS.)

Marckres and Gappa described ISICS as a state-of-the-art radio platform used by public safety agencies, first responders, schools, and municipal utilities.

County sheriff Jack Williams described current radio communications as good while officers are in their vehicles, but lacking coverage when officers are on the streets or inside buildings.

Marckres and Gappa said there are more than 90 ISICS towers in Iowa, but Greene County does not have one. They said the towers make in-building communications reliable.

After reviewing a map of existing towers located in Greene County, Marckres and Gappa found none that would be tall enough or strong enough for adding equipment. They recommended a new tower be located in the Jefferson area to best fit into the ISICS communications system.

Macres and Gappa recommended a 200-foot tower. They estimated the cost for a new tower, microwave, fence, other equipment, and moving dispatch to the new law enforcement center at $2,795,294. They estimated maintenance at $288,381 for the period of 2024 through 2030.

This starts discussion, board chair John Muir said. Were 18 to 24 months out.

No action was taken by the board.

Jefferson city administrator Mike Palmer gave his monthly report on various city projects. He mentioned that Thomas Jefferson Gardens will sponsor farmers markets on Tuesdays, there are now flower planters in Arch Alley, and that the city is close to bidding out a water main replacement project on Russell St.

Patti Treibel-Leeds, representing Central Iowa Community Services (CICS), spoke to the board about a memorandum of understanding concerning the transfer of client files from Greene County to CICS.

The MOU ensures that ownership and possession of client mental health and disability services files generated prior to July 1, 2013, shall be transferred to CICS effective July 1, 2022.

The board unanimously approved the MOU.

Phil Heisterkamp, chair of the Bell Tower Festival steering committee, reported the Bell Tower Festival was very successful and he thanked the board for its financial support and encouragement.

County engineer Wade Weiss reported secondary road crews will be patching roads west of Churdan for several weeks.

The supervisors also acted as a board of canvass for the June 7 primary election, recording the returns for each voting precinct in the county.

Supervisor positions are up for election in November 2022 in District 2 and District 3. The board declared Dawn Rudolph the Republican nominee with no Democratic opposition in District 2. Dan Benitz was declared the Republican nominee and Mike Holden was declared the Democratic nominee for District 3.

Republican Katlynn Mechaelsen was declared the nominee for county treasurer with no Democratic opposition.

Democrat Deb McDonald was declared the Democratic nominee for county recorder with no Republican opposition.

No nominee from either major party was on the ballot for the position of county attorney. County attorney Thomas Laehn, won the 2018 election running as a Libertarian and will run as a Libertarian in 2022.

The supervisors later received a written request for a recount of the primary election ballots for the Republican nominee in Supervisor District 3. A special meeting was held on June 14 in the courthouse boardroom to consider the request.

Supervisor Mick Burkett was appointed chair pro tem. Election deputy Billie Jo Hoskins told the board James Hedges, a candidate for the Republican Supervisor District 3 nomination, had filed the written request.

After telephone consultation with attorney Laehn and gaining some additional information about the request, the request was deemed legally valid.

The supervisors unanimously ordered a recount of the Republican ballots in Supervisor District 3. The recount is set for Friday, June 17, at 8:30 am.

Read this article:
Another $2.4M added to list of county infrastructure needs - Greene County News Online

The North Carolina Board of Elections finalized the primary election voting numbers this month. Political analysts are beginning to make sense of the data. BPR looks at the impact of unaffiliated voters in Western North Carolina:

About 20 percent of registered voters in North Carolina went to the polls for the primary election.

Thats a record high for midterms in a non-presidential year.

Depends on if you want to look at this as a glass half empty or a glass half full scenario.

Chris Cooper is chair of the public policy institute at Western Carolina University.

Its a higher turnout than it has been in the recent past but its not what wed like it to be, said Cooper.

The largest group of voters in North Carolina were unaffiliated - those who are not affiliated with any party. About 52,000 unaffiliated voters cast ballots in the 11th Congressional District which encompasses about 15 counties in Western North Carolina. Thats more than the number of Democratic or Republican votes. (About 41,000 and about 50,000 voters, respectively.)

That district had one of the most watched races in the country with a crowded primary against Republican incumbent Congressman Madison Cawthorn. The congressman has had a pattern of allegations including traffic violations, sexual assault and white supremacist sympathies.

In North Carolina, unaffiliated voters can choose to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary. Across the state most chose Republican.

In the 11th congressional district on the Republican side, 40 percent of people who showed up were unaffiliated. That is the largest number in the state, said Cooper.

Cooper says that at the beginning of 2022 about 3,000 people switched from the Democratic party to unaffiliated. Over half of those voters cast their ballot in the Republican primary.

There is disagreement in the political science community over whether people are more likely to vote sincerely for someone who aligns with their values or vote strategically, explains Cooper.

It was a hard decision for a lot of people.

On primary election day, BPR talked with unaffiliated voter Curtis Collins in Jackson County. Collins said he thought about voting strategically against Congressman Madison Cawthorn.

I really kind of despise how we get whipped up into that game of voting to throw something instead of voting your conviction, said Collins.

Collins says he has voted for the Green Party in the past. The Green Party was on the ballot in 2018 but didnt meet minimum requirements in 2021 to continue to be included. Those over 9,000 voters were re-assigned to the unaffiliated party. This year, a Green Party candidate could be on the General Election Senate ticket. The candidates will be confirmed at the end of June.

Collins says he wishes there were more parties to vote for on the ballot. Part of his choice also came down to his vote in the Jackson County Sheriff's Office race.

It was a struggle to be like well do I want to get that Republican ballot to play that game. And I chose not to do that. I chose to vote for the person that I wanted to have the office, said Collins referring to NC-11.

The primary ballot rules can be confusing for voters. BPR spoke with person in North Asheville who showed up to vote for a friend running for Buncombe County district attorney.

The woman who did not wish to be identified said when she checked in she learned couldnt vote for her friend because she was registered under a different party.

I grew up Republican and Im a small business owner so, fiscally Im Republican, but socially I dont want to be affiliated with it anymorejust the whole abortion rights and the way things are going in the world today, she said.

While in the voting booth, she took time to cast votes in other races that, otherwise she wouldnt have turned out for.

I voted for mayor and whatever Madison Cawthorn is, I voted against him. I dont even know. Is he in the Congress? I dont know, she said.

For Cooper, it is clear that unaffiliated voters were a deciding factor in the NC-11 congressional race. He calls it a strategic two step. Remember those 3,000 Democratic who became unaffiliated?

[Senator] Chuck Edwards beat Madison Cawthorn by smaller than that number about 1,400 votes. So what that tells me is that sure most people are voting sincerely but there were probably a large enough number of people voting strategically to make a difference, said Cooper.

Edwards will now face Democratic candidate Jasmine Beach-Ferrara and Libertarian David Coatney in the general election in November.

Continue reading here:
Unaffiliated voters had a big impact on the NC-11 Primary Election - Blue Ridge Public Radio