The Alabama ballot appears to have BOTH a straight ticket option AND the option of voting candidate by candidate.
The question is: did a lot of people check straight-ticket and also voted for a candidate other than of that party, in the U.S. Senate race. For example: voted straight Republican AND voted for Jones or wrote-in a name for U.S. Senator.
There are at least two facts that have to be ascertained:
1st. How many votes are we talking about?
2nd. Has the resolution of voter intent already been adjudicated (and the state is simply following what is well-established law in counting these votes).
I’m from Alabama. I don’t know why the ballot was arranged the way it was.
The only question is “How many votes were cast for one Straight Party Voting, then the candidate for the other party was selected?”
I don’t know what Alabama’s rules for ballot counting are. Does “Straight Party” override the individual selections? Do individual selections override “Straight Party”.
Recounting should not be that huge a deal. We have optical scanners. You can put a ballot through a machine about every 3 seconds.
All that being said, I don’t expect 21,000 votes to be made up with that recount OR when absentee and military ballots are counted.