Political machines won’t go away any time soon. They’ll keep plugging away, pumping money into campaigns and telling voters how to vote come election day.

They may be wasting their breath &045;&045; and their money.

Yusuf Salaam’s 140-vote win over LaTosha Brown in the Alabama House of Representatives District 67 race says a whole lot about the power of political machines (or the lack thereof).

Salaam had no big endorsements. In fact, the biggest one he got was taken away a week before the election. Rev. Glenn King, who finished third in the June 4 Democratic primary, passed out a sample ballot at some voting locations yesterday. For the District 67 race, he marked neither Salaam nor Brown.

Rather, Salaam worked door-to-door, face-to-face, money-to-no money. Somehow, some way, he defeated a candidate who had, what many people consider, the most powerful political coalition in Dallas County backing her.

So how did Salaam win? Simple: He didn’t have a coalition backing him. He didn’t have a daily radio program bashing his opponent. He didn’t have a lot of money. He did have experience and a certain degree of trust among voters.

Don’t be fooled. One look at voting location numbers paints a vivid picture of how Salaam won. At every white voting location, he dominated Brown. Meanwhile, he pulled just enough votes in the black boxes to slip by his opponent.

Both Salaam and Brown campaigned on the same issues. They both wanted more jobs, better education and an improved way of life. Issues, it seems, played a small role in who won this election.

So was it the anti-influence of the machine that helped Salaam win? Alabama New South Coalition (State Sen. Hank Sanders is the board chairman) and the Alabama Democratic Conference (Mayor James Perkins is the Dallas County chairman) wholeheartedly backed Brown.

Obviously, the power of the machines didn’t necessarily mean a guaranteed victory for anyone. While Salaam vs. Brown was the biggest race in Dallas County, U.S. Rep. Earl Hilliard’s attempt to fend off challenger Artur Davis garnered a lot of attention, as well. Both Hilliard and Davis made repeated campaign stops in Selma to win the Black Belt vote.

Davis beat Hilliard by nearly 1,000 votes in Dallas County (Hilliard won this county in the primary less than a month ago), and Davis easily won the election throughout the district.

What does all of this mean?

It means voters in Dallas County have followed in the footsteps of Birmingham and Montgomery. In both of those cities, powerful (black) political machines once ruled local politics. In the past six years, those machines have been defeated and carry little weight among voters today.

It means voters in Dallas County have decided they’ll pick their own candidates from now on.

It means negative campaigning gets you nowhere.

It means the people who want to control local politics don’t have the control they want.

In the end, that’s a good thing for Selma, Alabama. Freedom to vote, after all, is the reason elections mean so much to us.