Alabama lets the two major parties have extraordinary power over whether to let members of those parties onto primary ballots or not. State law lets the major parties exclude candidates who have been “disloyal” (i.e., anyone who ran as a write-in candidate, or as an independent, or as a member of another party, during the preceding four years). At least 4 such individuals were blocked from 2004 primaries.

On July 12, the Alabama Supreme Court refused to hear another of these lawsuits, filed by an excluded candidate. The lower court had refused to put Steve Small on the Democratic Party ballot as a candidate for Jefferson County Commission, because 4 years ago he had run as a write-in candidate for the same office in the general election. Small v Turnham, 1051061. The Court said the case is moot because the primary was already held. Small had charged that the Democratic Party does not enforce its rule uniformly. Alabama doesn’t have a procedure for a write-in candidate to file as a “declared” write-in candidate anyway; there is no official record that Small ran as a write-in in 2002.