Gordo Council Votes to Officially Use Vote Counting Machines

BY Doug Sanders Jr.

News Correspondent

To satisfy the State of Alabama, the Gordo Town Council voted on April 14 to use vote-counting machines in the 2025 municipal elections, although it has been doing so for about 25 years. Mayor Craig Patterson said Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen has asked that all cities and towns in the state officially make it clear that they are going to use machines to count the ballots in the upcoming (and future) municipal election. Patterson said he believes the last time the Town of Gordo counted the results of a municipal election by hand was in the 1996 election, and that the first time Gordo used a machine to count the ballots was in 2000. Patterson read the section of the 1975 Code of Alabama related to voting machines and recommended the council approve a motion designating Gordo as using voting machines to count the upcoming election results to satisfy Allen’s request for a “paper trail.”