Alabama has the No. 1 ranked team in football. It also very may well be the No. 1 state in the U.S. for straight ticket voting on Election Day.

Only six states have it, and among those, none have released any data suggesting a higher turnout of voters who vote cast a straight ticket ballot in recent elections. Only South Carolina comes close.

Critics of the system say the top ranking raises questions about voter knowledge about the candidates, and whether voters are more motivated by partisan affiliation than anything else. Also, they say, voters may check the party and stop without casting their votes in any non-partisan races or amendments that are also on the ballots.

Supporters of straight ticket voting say the practice is a democratic boon for Alabama at a time when other states are moving away from it. It’s the easiest and quickest way to vote, they say.

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“Party identification is the No. 1 determinant of how someone votes,” said Megan Remmel, an associate professor of political sciences at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, who has researched the effects of straight ticket voting on down ballot contests. “Even people who call themselves independent are not. In straight ticket voting, people can use that No. 1 determinant and be done with a lot of the ballot, even if they’re ‘independent.’”

Said Regina Wagner, a political science professor at the University of Alabama, “Overall, straight ticket voting is something parties like because it discourages ticket splitting. In states like Alabama, with one dominant party, it is going to benefit one party significantly more than the other. On the other hand, it can be useful shorthand for voters who may not be informed about individual candidates.”

High percentages

Straight ticket voting allows a voter, during a general election, to check a single box in support of a political party’s slate of candidates without requiring the voter to peruse the rest of the ballot.

The party choices are listed at the top of the ballot. One vote then allocates all of the choices to one party’s candidates.

Nearly two-thirds of Alabama voters, or 65.2%, voted straight ticket during the 2018 midterm elections and a comparable number is expected to do so during the November 8 general election, according to Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill.

During the 2020 presidential election, 67.1% of Alabama voters went the straight ticket route.

Comparably, the few states with the straight ticket option are seeing strong numbers, but nothing like Alabama.

In Oklahoma, media accounts suggest that 710,200 of its votes, or around 46% of the more than 1.5 million votes cast in the 2020 presidential contest, were straight ticket votes. South Carolina voters had a higher turnout of straight ticket voters two years ago: 1.6 million of the 2.5 million votes cast, or 64%.

Indiana, Michigan, and Kentucky are the only remaining states with the straight ticket option. Michigan only recently reinstated the option after the federal courts got involved, and there is no data to suggest voters in that state voted straight ticket in higher percentages than Alabama.

Indiana legislation in 2016 did away with straight ticket voting for at-large contests. Kentucky state election officials do not track the percentage of voters who vote straight ticket.

The practice could get magnified even more this year in Alabama with a third-party on the ballot for the first time since 2002. Voters can choose whether to vote straight ticket for Republicans, Democrats and Libertarian candidates. The Libertarian Party, in fact, needs at least 20% of the vote in one of the statewide races to maintain ballot access in 2024.

“Straight-ticket voting is popular, easy, and represent practically no threat to the Republican’s hegemony in the Legislature,” said David Hughes, a political science professor at Auburn University at Montgomery.

No reform coming

Straight ticket voting was common in the U.S. during the 1960s, but more states are doing away with it even as partisan polarization is near all-time highs.

A longtime reform effort has been underway to get rid of the practice. Since 2011, nine states abolished of straight ticket voting. In Alabama, where Republicans control all halls of power, there is little serious push to chip away at the practice, nor is there any political incentive to do so.

Straight ticket voting is surging in Alabama, growing by 15 percentage points over the past decade. During the 2012 presidential election, 52% of votes cast a straight party ticket. Slightly less than that voted straight-ticket in 2008.

Republican county chairs are mostly pleased with the status quo.

“We support it, the party supports it, and we encourage it,” said Michael Hoyt, chairman of the Baldwin County Republican Party. “Our tag line for a couple of election cycles has been, ‘Vote Republican and Keep Baldwin County Great.’ I encourage people to check the elephant and leave because there are no options on the other side.”

Legislation backed by House Democrats last session would have gotten rid of straight-ticket voting.

But even within the Democratic Party there are disagreements. Joe Reed, the chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference, in a letter to the Democratic co-sponsors, said the legislation was a way to suppress votes. He also said that Democratic lawmakers had benefitted from the practice.

State Rep. Jeremy Gray, D-Opelika, who pitched the legislation last year, said he will not reintroduce it during the 2023 legislative session. Gray said “more education around the issue of straight-ticket voting is needed” before legislation can move forward.

He said he first introduced the legislation through the “lens of data-driven evidence” that showed straight-ticket voting declining for Democratic voters in Alabama. According to Gray’s analysis, voting straight-ticket by Republicans was up 49% in 2020 over 2016, compared to just 16% among Democrats.

Gray said the practice was especially troublesome when in 2020, “we had a sitting senator on the ballot in Doug Jones, one of the most bipartisan U.S. senators in the country, who lost by a wide margin to a political newcomer” in current Senator Tommy Tuberville.

Hughes also weighed in on straight-ticket voting having a detrimental impact on Jones’ chances of re-election. He said that Tuberville benefited from having former President Donald Trump on the ballot, and that straight-ticket voting made it almost mathematically impossible for Jones to win.

“I believe this topic speaks more to voters identifying with parties rather than the candidates on the ballot, which I believe is dangerous when we talk about wanting to strengthen democracy and the trust in government,” Gray said.

‘Significant role’

The percentages of Alabama Republicans voting straight-ticket grew from 2018 to 2020.

During the 2018 midterms, 663,269 Republican voters or 38% of the total ballots cast, went the straight-ticket route. That election saw 462,065 Democratic straight-ticket votes or 26%.

In 2020, 967,157 GOP voters, or 41% of the total votes cast, were Republican straight-ticket votes. Among Democrats, 596,786 or 25% voted straight-party.

But straight-ticket voting could benefit Democrats in Jefferson County, where any tight county races could be determined by the number of Democratic straight-ticket votes. Political observers believe the sheriff’s contest and a race for the Jefferson County School Board, will be closely contested races.

Jefferson County Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Rogers estimates that about 35% of Jefferson County voters will vote straight-ticket Democratic, 30% will go with Republicans and another 35% will split their tickets.

“It plays a significant role in any race, and it will play a role for sure (in the county sheriff’s contest),” said Rogers. “Statistically, we believe we will have slight advantage here in Jefferson County.” Rogers, though, said he was “ambivalent” about whether it remains on the ballot in years to come.

Gray said the Alabama Democratic Party is hesitant about going all-in toward abolishing straight-ticket voting because some people, like Reed, believe it would disenfranchise Black voters.

That was the argument in Michigan when the state re-established straight-ticket voting after lawmakers decided to abolish it in 2016.

A federal court found that Michigan’s abolishment of straight ticket voting disproportionately affected Black voters and placed a preliminary injunction enforcing the law during the 2016 election. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request to rule on the matter and straight ticket voting was not an option during that year’s midterm elections. Voters then passed a ballot proposal in November 2018 to amend the state’s Constitution and reinstituted the practice in 2019.

Matt Grossman, a political science professor at Michigan State University, said that removal of straight ticket voting likely would not have made a big difference in the state’s election outcomes, though he believes it would have increased votes for lower-level offices that are usually skipped.

Gray said he hopes there is room for Alabama to compromise, and points to Indiana where in 2016, lawmakers agreed to do away with the practice for some down-ballot contests.

Said Gray, “But we are not there yet as a party or a state.”

Republican states act

The most recent states to do away with straight-ticket voting are Republican strongholds – Utah and Texas.

In Texas, which has been ruled by Republicans since 1998, GOP-led lawmakers did away with straight-ticket voting ahead of the 2020 elections. Democratic lawmakers fought to get it reinstated but lost in subsequent federal court decisions.

Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a longtime observer of Southern politics, said that Texas Republicans backed the measure because a slate of GOP judges was “getting wiped out by Democratic judges” and the blame went on straight-ticket voting.

“They got rid of it in all elections in Texas even though straight-ticket voting generally benefitted the Republicans,” said Jillson. “They felt they could continue to win and save the judges. But I don’t think that bore out (since 2020). I think the municipal judgeships have continued to go Democratic.”

Said Jillson, “I think the lesson (in Texas) is that if you are a one-party Republican state, you should keep your straight-ticket voting. It’s generally beneficial to your party.”

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In Utah, the effort to do abolish straight-party voting was bipartisan and led by a Democratic lawmaker in a supermajority Republican Legislature.

Patrice Arendt, the former Utah representative who pushed to abolish for nearly a decade, said her state had become the only state with an “extensive mail-in ballot program” that had straight-ticket voting and was the only Western State that allowed for it. Alabama does not allow for mail-in voting.

“We have a supermajority Republican (legislature) here and I’m a Democrat,” said Arendt, who retired from the Utah State House after the 2020 election. “It took working in a bipartisan way. It does take someone who pushes for it, which is true for any major legislation. I also had support from major groups and the Utah Association of County Clerks and the League of Women Voters and school board associations. That was important.”

She said the push to do away with straight-ticket voting was to reduce voter confusion. “I had county clerks telling me there was more confusion with this part of the ballot,” said Arendt. “They thought, ‘Oh, I’m a Democrat and need to check this box’ or ‘I’m a Republican, and I cannot check that box.’ People would skip voting in non-partisan races for judges and school boards and constitutional amendments. They were very confused.”

Voter roll-off

Remmel, the Bradley University professor, said one of the concerns with straight-ticket voting is with “voter roll-off.” That term means that voters will not continue with the ballot after voting for their party of choice and skip non-partisan ballot contests, referendums and – in Alabama’s case – constitutional amendments.

There are 10 statewide constitutional amendments on the November 8 ballot in Alabama.

“One of the major issues with (straight-ticket voting) is what’s called ‘voter roll-off,’ and not every single item on a ballot is a partisan race,” said Remmel. “If a voter simply checks ‘Democrat’ or ‘Republican’ at the top of their ballot and submits it, they’ve missed a number of other important races and measures. They’ve missed judicial elections, county coroner elections, tax levy referendums, and constitutional amendments.”

Hoyt, the Baldwin County GOP chairman, said he disagrees that voter roll-off is problematic.

“I think we discredit voters a lot,” he said. “They think (votes) check it off (with a straight-ticket vote) and don’t have to look at the rest of the ballot. But I disagree with that. They do vote Republican and then will vote on the ballot referendums. But I’ve known people throughout the years whose default ballot referendum vote is ‘No.’”