When elections move in ways we don’t expect, we often say voters sent a message to their elected officials. We especially say this when incumbents are booted from office.

Dallas County voters sent a message on Tuesday. The message: We are willing to accept change and we are willing to judge a candidate on what the candidate represents. These recent results could be viewed as a continuation of the changes that occurred in 2000 when Joe Smitherman was not re-elected as Selma’s mayor.

In the race for the House of Representatives, Artur Davis stepped up and unseated Earl Hillard, who had held the house seat for five terms.

Davis hammered home a message that Hilliard was not representing the Black Belt region very well. He stuck close to the key issue of medical care and made the case that our area has not grown or prospered like it could. The well-spoken Davis represented a fresh image that voters from Birmingham to Selma accepted.

Closer to home, Yusuf Salaam squeaked out a narrow victory over LaTosha Brown in the Alabama House District 67 race. In the primary, voters decided that incumbent Ed Maull was no longer going to represent them.

That left Brown and Salaam. Both represented a fresh start after the Maull years. Brown had plenty of political backing, ran a creative campaign, and displayed a genuine interest in seeing Dallas County succeed.

But by a slim margin, voters chose the more experienced Salaam to represent the Democrats this fall against Mark Story. Voters were able to look past Salaam’s Muslim religion and accept him as someone who can represent the area well in Montgomery.

Salaam’s strength in the campaign was his tenacious attitude, his city council experience, and his ability to appeal to a wide variety of voters.

Many probably felt like those attributes could serve Salaam well in Montgomery and those qualities could make for a good change.