Roy Moore should be embarrassed.
Last week, one of the most contentious Senate races in American history came to a close in Alabama when Democrat Doug Jones captured the victory over the controversial GOP nominee.
Moore has been accused by multiple women of sexually assaulting them when they were teens. One woman was only 14-years-old at the time of the abuse. He denied the allegations and his campaign repeatedly smeared the women who came forward. Despite the ugliness, most white Alabama voters, especially evangelicals, voted for Moore anyway.
The GOP campaign ran on a fairly successful platform of hate and fear, casting Jones as a murderous pro-abortion candidate who was “in bed” with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Considering no Democrat has won a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years, Jones was expected to lose.
And then election day happened and shocked the world.
Moore wound up losing the race by over 20,000 votes, thanks mainly to African-American voters who came out in droves to vote for Jones instead of the pedophile. But Republicans did their part to thwart a Moore victory as well by staging a write-in campaign endorsing “anyone other than Roy Moore.”
Donald Trump grudgingly congratulated Jones, but blamed Moore’s loss on those 22,000 write-in votes and claimed that the “deck was stacked against him.”
Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017
The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017
Yeah, about those write-in votes…
It turns out in just one county alone, people voted for Bugs Bunny, Buddy the Elf, Ronald Reagan, Bozo the Clown, and any “competent conservative” rather than vote for Roy Moore. It’s likely that many of the write-in voters would not have voted for Moore, even if he hadn’t been accused of sexual assault. Twice elected as the Chief Justice of Alabama, Moore was twice removed from the bench for refusing to comply with federal rules. In 2003 he refused to remove the ten commandments monument that he installed in the lobby of the Alabama Judicial building and then in 2016, he directed probate judges to continue to enforce the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. His record and reputation confirmed his stance as a homophobic Christian evangelical.
Since the election, Moore has firmly refused to concede the loss. This week he sent a letter to his supporters begging them for money so he can continue contesting the result.
“Reports of potential voter fraud and various other irregularities are streaming in from all across the state,” the fundraising email claimed. “Campaign staff and volunteers are chasing down and investigating each and every report the moment they’re received.”
Except, Moore has not provided any evidence of voter fraud. The AL Secretary of State, John Merrill claims there have been 70-80 allegations of fraud since election day, but many of them were unfounded. The NAACP is, however, pressing Merrill over reports of voters of color being turned away from the polls or dropped from the rosters.
