Courting Votes in Alabama

By Winthrop E. Johnson

What if someone tried to change the results of an election after it was over? What if they used the courts? What if they succeeded in delaying the certification of the winner for over eleven months?... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0933451415
• ISBN13: 9780933451414
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Prescott Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 75.0" x 75.0"

Customer Reviews

The real story behind a nasty judicial election in Alabama

If you're not a political insider, but you're willing to patiently study the intricacies of legal challenges to election results, you'll be amazed at what Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Perry Hooper's opponents tried to do to circumvent election laws to defeat him. It's unfortunate that these sorts of cases--which usually involve absentee ballot irregularities, vote total discrepancies, challenged ballots, etc., as well as complex statutory requirements--are so complex that you could never really figure out what's going on from reading newspaper coverage of them. It really takes a book like Johnson's to bring it all out in the open.[Full disclosure--I've known Johnson for about two years and count him as a friend, though we've never worked together or lived in the same city.]The book focuses on Chief Justice Hooper's race in 1994 (Johnson was intimately involved with Hooper's campaign), but it's also a great (and realistic, I'm afraid) picture of political strife and election fighting in Alabama. And unfortunately, Hooper's race is hardly the only example of this sort of thing. What's most disturbing about this sort of episode is that, by calling into question the integrity of our elections, it automatically undermines the legitimacy of everything our governments do. It's disturbing that there are so many people willing to jeopardize this legitimacy for the sake of one candidate or party victory (or, in many cases, one's own job). But, as Johnson recognizes, given human nature, it's really not surprising. Johnson pulls no punches in this book. In fact, as an Alabama resident, part of me doesn't want anyone to read this book because it reflects so poorly on politics in our state. (As if Alabama needs more bad publicity in that area.) On the other hand, truth and the rule of law triumphed in the end in this case, and there's no story worth telling more than that.The book does suffer from typographical and other editing errors (e.g., forced transitions between passages and structural difficulties in some chapters) that are more frequent than one usually sees in books of this nature. However, they're all of an editing/printing nature, and not errors in grammar or fact. Perhaps they resulted from a rush to get the work into print. Overall, though, Johnson's story (and his honest telling of it) is so compelling that the editing and printing problems shouldn't prevent most readers from being fascinated with the book. In any case, I'd have no trouble giving five stars to a more closely edited second edition.