Alabama set a high for absentee ballots in 2012, when 89,000 were successfully cast.

But Secretary of State John Merrill said the state is on pace to surpass that number.

“For the Nov. 3 general election, we’ve actually had more than 125,000 ballot applications that have been submitted to us and more than 50,000 that have been successfully returned already,” he said.

“As you can see,” Merrill said, “we’re going to shatter that record.”

But the secretary of state said election officials in the state’s 67 counties aren’t worried because they’re ready.

“We’ve already made preparations for this, hiring additional people, enabling more than what we would perceive the necessary number of tabulators to be available on election day to process the ballots,” he said.

Sept. 9 was the first day voters could apply for absentee ballots in person and then cast their ballots. Jefferson County Circuit Clerk Jackie Anderson-Smith said a flood of voters has rolled through her office since then.

“We had 500 or 600 people that day, 500 or 600 people the next day, and 500 or 600 the third day,” she said. “That is when our monsoon started picking up. We have averaged a minimum of 400 to 500 a day the rest of the month of September.”

As clerk, she is the absentee elections manager for the county’s Birmingham Division.

Anderson-Smith said her office as of Wednesday had received about 17,000 applications for absentee ballots. Of those, about 7,500 were from people who were walk-in absentee voters.

The circuit clerk dealt with the heightened demand by increasing her staff, going from nine in July to 27. She’s been authorized to push that total as high as 30, she said.

James P. Naftel II, presiding probate judge of Jefferson County, said he wouldn’t be surprised if absentee ballot applications in the county topped 30,000 for the general election.

Naftel said officials are working to be certain voters know how to fill out the absentee ballots.

“If they vote in-person absentee upstairs (at the courthouse in downtown Birmingham), people walk them through the process,” he said. “They make sure not only the application’s filled out right and they have proper ID. And when they vote and fill out the affidavit, they make sure that’s done correctly and has the right witnesses. Everybody’s trying hard to make sure people are doing it correctly.”

Regular polling places are ready for the election day push as well, the secretary of state said, with more than enough poll workers in every county.

“As a matter of fact, we passed legislation in 2019 that enabled students that are ages 16, 17 and 18 … to be able to work the polls,” Merrill said. “They can do everything except handle a ballot and determine the eligibility of a voter.

“And we also have initiated a process on our own our website – www.alabamavotes.gov  –  for people to indicate their interest in working,” he continued. “We’ve received hundreds of inquiries from people who’ve never worked the polls before who are now going to be working on Nov. 3 as formal, official poll workers. We’re not going to have a shortage in Alabama.”

To deal with the crush of absentee ballots, Gov. Kay Ivey this week issued an order allowing election officials to begin counting absentee ballots at the same time the polls open, at 7 a.m. on election day. The law had dictated that absentee ballots could not be counted until the polls closed at 7 p.m.

Merrill said he doubts that the governor’s order will face a legal challenge.

“That’s something that we requested to be done,” he said. “Obviously, 7 a.m. is when polls open so that makes it no different than what you normally experience in a regular day of voting because the ballots are cast beginning at 7 o’clock a.m. And these (absentee) ballots were already cast but they’ll start to be counted on election day at 7 a.m. when all the others are.”

But, as with ballots cast the day of the election, no tallies will be reported before polls close. Reporting running totals could influence whether people choose to vote.