City of Huntsville District 5 runoff election to be determined by provisional ballot count

Published on August 26, 2020

The Madison County Board of Registrars will begin validating provisional ballots from the August 25 Municipal Election and the outcome will determine the need for a runoff in the District 5 City Council race.

Preliminary results show a runoff election between Will Culver and John Meredith. Culver, the incumbent, received 2,470 votes (49.65%), Meredith 1,887 votes (37.93%) and Tom Hopf 618 votes (12.42%). Culver must receive 50% of the vote plus one to avoid a runoff.

Huntsville City Clerk-Treasurer Ken Benion said there are enough provisional ballots that could potentially impact the District 5 election. A provisional ballot is used to record a vote when there are questions about a given voter’s eligibility that must be resolved before the vote can count.

“At this point, we can’t determine if there will be a runoff election or not,” he said. “We won’t know until the Board of Registrars certifies the provisional ballots and we subsequently open and count the ballots during canvassing.”

Canvassing occurs during a special session of the City Council where the City-Clerk Treasurer opens and counts each provisional ballot. Council will call the session as soon as the Madison County Board of Registrars validates the provisional votes, which is expected to take through the weekend. Council has tentatively set a special session for Monday, August 31, at 10:30 a.m. in the Council Chambers. The City is required to certify the votes no later than 12 p.m. on Tuesday, September 1.

In other municipal election results, Mayor Tommy Battle won re-election with 77.65% of the 27,756 votes cast. City Council President Devyn Keith won his District 1 seat with 63.89% of the vote among 4,536 voters, while District 1 School Board Member Michelle Watkins also won re-election with 87.8% of the vote.

For more results on the Municipal election visit the Madison County Board of Registrar election webpage.