Alabama Supreme Court reverses decision on JeffCo election — but it likely won’t matter

Bill Veitch photo courtesy of Veitch’s Facebook page.

The Alabama Supreme Court has reversed a ruling by a lower court regarding whether or not Bessemer Cutoff residents will be able to vote in June 5’s primary — though, as the court noted, it would likely be too late to have any impact on the race.

District Attorney candidate Bill Veitch, a Republican, filed a suit to have his race included on Bessemer ballots during the primaries, arguing that a 1953 act that prevents that from happening had been voided by a later law, as well as ignored in the 2016 primaries. Veitch is the former district attorney for the county’s Bessemer division.

As it stands, Bessemer Cutoff residents will not be able to vote in the primary — only Birmingham Division residents will be able to do so. During this fall’s general election, all voters will be able to vote.

A circuit judge had dismissed Veitch’s case, saying that it did not have the jurisdiction to grant his request to be included on the ballot. But the Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday that the circuit court does have jurisdiction, though they did not rule on the specifics of Veitch’s case.

Read Veitch’s interview with the Jefferson County Journal here.

Even so, the new ruling is unlikely to make a difference. “I note, at this late hour, the circuit court is wholly incapable of providing Veitch any relief in this proceeding that could have any effect on the June 5, 2018, primary election,” wrote Justice Tommy Bryan in an addendum to the court’s ruling.

“It hurts me deeply that 114,000 registered voters are not being
allowed to vote. I have done everything I can to fight that and get them the right to vote,” Veitch said in a press release Friday afternoon. “Frankly I am embarrassed to tell people how our system really works. No one with common
sense can figure out why they did what they did.”

Veitch’s press release declared that the Supreme Court decision proved him “correct,” though the court explicitly stated in its ruling that it had “no opinion” on the specifics of his case.

Veitch told the Jefferson County Journal last month that he believed the exclusion of the cutoff was politically motivated. “This is the first time in the history of Jefferson County that the Cutoff has been left out of the primary process,” he said. “But somebody didn’t want [me] on the ballot this time, so they made that decision.”

Representatives for the Jefferson County Probate Court, which administers the county’s elections, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.