Absentee voting turnout for Mobile’s upcoming municipal election is running behind the pace set during the city’s last municipal election in 2017, even as the region continues to grapple with a surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. The gap has puzzled some election watchers and frustrated some voters, and it comes down in large part to a single legal distinction between this election and the ones Mobile voters have grown used to since the pandemic began.
Mobile City Clerk Lisa Carroll-Lambert said her office had expected a heavier response given the ongoing pandemic, but the numbers have told a different story. “In comparison, it’s kind of slow,” she said. “I thought because of COVID, it would be a lot heavier.” Her office, which administers absentee voting for the city from Government Plaza, had braced for a rush of applications as delta-variant case counts climbed across Mobile County through the summer.
One factor behind the softer turnout may be that, unlike during the 2020 presidential election, Alabama voters cannot cite COVID-19 concerns as a valid excuse to cast an absentee ballot this time around. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has not extended that allowance for the municipal race. Under Alabama law, absentee ballots are available only to voters with a specific excuse — travel outside the municipality on election day, illness or physical infirmity, work obligations, membership in the armed forces, and a short list of other circumstances — and fear of catching the virus is not among them.
The Mobile City Council formally requested that Merrill reconsider, but the request was denied within a day, according to Carroll-Lambert. The council had hoped the state would mirror the flexibility offered during 2020, when pandemic-era allowances opened absentee voting to any voter wary of in-person exposure. Without that extension, the city was left to administer the stricter statutory standard for a municipal election held in the middle of the region’s worst COVID surge of the year.
The Calendar and the Count
The deadline to submit mail-in absentee ballots passed on Tuesday, Aug. 17, while the window for in-person absentee voting was set to close Thursday, Aug. 19. In-person absentee voting has been available on the first floor of Government Plaza, where voters can apply for, receive and cast their ballot in a single visit. The municipal election itself was set for the following Tuesday, Aug. 24, when Mobile voters would choose a mayor and City Council.
As of Monday, Aug. 16, Carroll-Lambert’s office reported receiving more than 1,000 absentee ballots, with 592 submitted by mail and 436 cast in person. Roughly 2,000 absentee applications had been picked up by prospective voters, putting the overall response rate at about 50 percent — meaning half of the residents who took the trouble to obtain an application had not yet returned it as the deadlines approached.
The numbers were notable on two fronts. First, a 50 percent return rate leaves hundreds of ballots on the table, since applications that are never returned simply expire. Second, the total lagged 2017 despite four additional years of growth in Mobile’s population and a pandemic that might reasonably have pushed more voters toward alternatives to the traditional polling place.
Carroll-Lambert said that during council discussions over whether to press the Secretary of State’s office for a COVID-19 exception, she informed members that many voters had already been writing COVID-19 on their applications as a reason for requesting an absentee ballot, even though fear of the virus alone does not qualify as an approved excuse under state law. An underlying medical condition or infirmity, however, can qualify — a distinction that matters for voters who assumed the 2020 rules still applied.
When an application lists COVID-19 without meeting that threshold, Carroll-Lambert said, it does not qualify on its own, and voters who cite the virus alone must supply a lawful excuse before their ballots can be processed. The clerk’s office has had to navigate that gap one application at a time, explaining to voters why the rule that governed the presidential election no longer does, and pointing them toward the statutory grounds that do apply — including illness and infirmity for those whose health genuinely puts them at risk.
The distinction between fear of infection and qualifying medical conditions is legal, not practical, and it is easy for voters to miss. Alabama’s absentee statute was written long before the pandemic, and its list of excuses presumes that a voter physically unable to reach the polls — not one unwilling to risk them — is the proper case for a mail ballot. The 2020 pandemic exception was an emergency accommodation by the state, and when the state declined to repeat it for municipal races, cities like Mobile were bound by the older, stricter text.
Why Municipal Turnout Runs Light
Municipal elections in Alabama are chronically low-turnout affairs, and the absentee numbers reflect that baseline. City races fall in odd-numbered years, off the cycle that draws presidential and statewide attention, and they are decided entirely within city limits — meaning voters who live outside the city, including most of Mobile County’s suburban population, sit them out entirely. Turnout that struggles to reach one voter in three in a contested mayoral year is routine in Alabama municipalities.
The 2017 comparison is the natural benchmark, since it was the last time Mobile’s municipal offices appeared on the ballot. That election drew a competitive mayoral field and produced the city’s recent pattern of leadership, with voters returning the incumbent mayor and settling a contested council slate. Applications picked up and ballots returned that summer set the mark this year’s totals are measured against — and by the middle of August, this year was trailing it.
COVID’s resurgence added another layer of complication for election administrators. Mobile County’s case counts and hospitalizations were climbing sharply in August 2021, straining hospitals and prompting new masking guidance across public institutions. Election offices had to balance voter access with staff safety, sanitizing voting equipment and encouraging the in-person absentee option at Government Plaza for voters uncomfortable with a crowd on election day.
For the campaigns on the Aug. 24 ballot, the absentee lag is a strategic fact as much as a civic one. Organized absentee programs — chasing the roughly 1,000 voters who picked up applications but had not returned them — can decide close council races in a low-turnout electorate. Candidates and party activists typically run their own reminder calls and mailings ahead of the in-person deadline, precisely because a returned application no one chases is a vote that never gets cast.
What the Rules Mean for Voters
For Mobile residents still weighing an absentee ballot in the final days of the window, the practical rules were straightforward. A mail-in ballot had to be returned by the Aug. 17 deadline, with the application and the ballot both notarized or witnessed as state law requires. In-person absentee voting remained open through Thursday, Aug. 19, on the first floor of Government Plaza, where a voter could complete the entire process — application, ballot and envelope — in one trip without the notarization logistics of the mail route.
Voters with genuine medical concerns could still qualify under the illness and infirmity excuse, which existed before the pandemic and remains on the books. The clerk’s message to the public emphasized the difference: a generalized worry about the virus does not qualify, but a documented medical condition that makes voting in person risky or difficult does. Elderly voters, homebound voters and caregivers all fall within categories the statute recognizes.
The episode has added to a longer-running debate in Alabama about absentee voting itself. Election officials in both parties periodically propose expanding the state’s excuse requirements — either to no-excuse absentee voting or to a broader list of qualifying circumstances — while others resist, arguing that restrictions protect the integrity of the process. The pandemic briefly showed what the expanded version looks like in practice: record absentee volume, longer processing times and heavier workloads for clerks like Carroll-Lambert’s office. The state’s return to the old rules has snapped that experiment back, leaving municipal clerks to explain the change to voters one interaction at a time.
The office’s experience this summer may shape how the next municipal cycle is run. Whatever the totals finish at, the pattern holds a lesson for future Mobile elections. Voters’ behavior tracked the rules, not the risk — applications lagged not because the virus had faded but because the state had removed the pathway that 2020’s emergency had opened. Until Alabama’s absentee statute changes again, municipal elections will run under the stricter standard, and clerks will keep fielding the same question Carroll-Lambert’s office has heard all summer: why can’t I vote absentee like I did last year?