UWOC Primary Election Guide

The United Women of Color is a 501c3 nonprofit that was formed in 2018 by Executive Director Angela Curry. As an alumna of UAH, she formed the organization to create a way to unite people across different ethnicities to directly address civic, economic, and educational gaps in North Alabama. Amy Jackson serves as a project coordinator for the UWOC, blogs about the organization on their website and other forums, and is part of the team that developed a new voter guide for the primary election that takes place tomorrow throughout the state.

Amy came to the WLRH studios to tell us about the UWOC and the new guide. I’m Amy Jackson with United Women of Color here in Huntsville. I understand the United Women of Color has put out a new publication.

We have. In partnership with Alabama Forward, we have put out the North Alabama Election Guide. In 2025, we developed and distributed city-specific, nonpartisan election guides for Madison and Decatur.

I took a look at it online at the website and I have put that website URL on our website as well as told people to go to your Facebook page to find it there. It is an amazing publication electronically. How is it on paper? It looks exactly the same on paper.

That’s great. Yes, it’s just digitally put online and as you said on our Facebook, United Women of Color Huntsville. So, who came up with this idea? This is something our executive director has wanted to do for a long time, put these in the hands of people that’s bipartisan.

This guide tells people in Limestone, Madison, and Morgan Counties exactly who is running in what race. It has information on those people running in the primaries, it has their bios, it has their priorities, and there are other states that have these go out to everyone and so we wanted to do our part and try to get them in people’s hands. Where do you get your information for your bios? Actually, we had a volunteer-led research party at the office.

They gathered information on the web. Were you able to reach out to the candidates to get any input on this publication? Yes, we did. Specifically, we talked to three of the D5 candidates running for representatives.

They are the only ones that are contested. The other candidate is not contested so we did not talk to him but we sat down with three of the candidates in our office. Is there still time for people to be able to get more information about these candidates by going to their websites? Is there anything that you provide that will help people to find more information? Yes.

If you go look at the North Alabama election guide on our website or on our Facebook page, yes, that is available. It will be available through Tuesday. The polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday and there are sample ballots in there for each county that we have listed, Limestone, Madison, and Morgan County.

We also have the amendments listed and have it in plain language so you can try to understand what you’re going to do before you get into your voting booth. If you want to vote yes, if you want to vote no for those amendments because they can sometimes be hard to understand. What other things are in the book? We also have a list of things that you need to bring with you on the day of the election which includes your valid photo ID.

That can be a driver’s license, a non-driver ID, a passport, or a military ID. It also tells you the polling hours, which we’ve talked about, which are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It also has the number, the election protection hotline, if you run into any problems while you’re at the ballot. We want you to know your rights, that you can bring someone with you to assist you at the polls, you can request accommodations, and that you cannot be intimidated or harassed.

All of this information is in the North Alabama Election Guide on our website. At the end of the legislative session that was called by the governor earlier this month, the final output from that was that four districts would be able to have special elections. Initially the idea was that they would have the special elections if the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to put back its 2023 legislative maps.

At the end of that week, the Supreme Court had told Alabama that they could put back in the 2023 maps until the district court gave the decision. Does this affect anyone in our districts, anyone in North Alabama? It should not affect any voters in our district. So we shouldn’t have to worry about a special election coming up in August? No, your vote on Tuesday will count.

I understand that you also have these guides coming up for further elections. I believe Angela had told me that you have one coming up for the Huntsville City elections. Yes, we do.

We have one. We will be starting to work on it straight away, and we will have it out in time for the August elections in Huntsville. No rest for the weary.

No, and we’ll have one again for November. Oh, that’s going to be the tough one. Yes, yes.

But with United Women of Color, we have hosted candidate forums, and we build relationships year-round. So we talk about civic engagement year-round. We talk about building leaders.

We talk about the issues that matter to you. We talk about how to get in touch with your legislator so that civic engagement is not only just the one day that you’re in the polls, or three days a year, or however many you’re there. We really try to build our relationships and meet people where they are, and so we have mailed some of these out to homes.

They’re available digitally, and we really just want you to be aware what’s going on in North Alabama. Well, I’m glad you’re out there doing that for us. I know that everybody can’t go out and vet every single candidate, so this is a nice resource to have.

I appreciate all the work that you’re doing, and thank you for bringing this to us, and thank you for coming on the air to let us know about it. Thank you. Amy Jackson is a project coordinator for the United Women of Color.

The UWOC Voter’s Guide to Tomorrow’s Primary and Constitutional Amendment Election is available online by going to our website and finding this interview on our news page, where we’ve included a link to the guide. You can also find links to the guide by going to the United Women of Color Facebook page. This is Bob Nance.

Don’t forget to vote tomorrow. You’re listening to Tennessee Valley Mornings on 89.3 WLRH.