Alabama governor calls special session to move primaries for redistricting, while Georgia passes

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called legislators into a special session Friday and asked them to reschedule the state's midterm primaries, in hopes that pushing those elections back will give them time to re-install congressional maps that had been blocked in court before a landmark Supreme Court ruling changed the landscape around race and redistricting this week.Alabama was scheduled to host its election on May 19, using a court-ordered map that includes two congressional districts in which Black voters have a good chance of electing the representative of their choice, following redistricting litigation earlier this decade. But after a Wednesday ruling from the Supreme Court that signals that Alabama might be allowed to use a previous map with just one Black-majority district, Ivey said Friday she wanted state lawmakers to reschedule the election.“By calling the Legislature into a special session, I am ensuring Alabama is prepared should the courts act quickly enough to allow Alabama’s previously drawn congressional and state Senate maps to be used during this election cycle," Ivey said in a statement Friday afternoon.Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Louisiana's congressional map unconstitutional in an opinion effectively gutting the racial gerrymandering protections in Section 2 of the