In a more perfect world, an alleged pedophile, confirmed bigot, and amateur poet would take his historic election drubbing with a modicum of dignity and slink back into whatever varmint hole he crawled out of. But this is a dark, fallen world, and disgraced former Judge Roy Moore shows no sign of admitting he lost Alabama’s special Senate election fair and square.
On Thursday morning, Moore announced he’d filed an “election complaint” with a circuit court in Montgomery, AL seeking to block the certification of Democrat Doug Jones as the state’s new senator later this afternoon.
“The purpose of the complaint is to preserve evidence of potential election fraud and to postpone the certification of Alabama’s Special Election by Secretary of State John Merrill until a thorough investigation of potential election fraud, that improperly altered the outcome of this election, is conducted,” Moore said in a statement posted to his Facebook page.
In grasping for evidence of “voter fraud,” Moore cites higher-than-expected turnout among black voters in Jefferson County. But, as University of Chicago Political Scientist Daniel Nichanian pointed out, not only is the claim rife with the sort of latent racism we’ve come to expect from the Moore camp, it’s also totally false. Instead, Nichanian notes, it’s predicated largely on unreliable exit polling, GOP turnout predictions, and, in one case, an offhand comment made in a single YouTube video.
Secretary of State Merrill, a Republican who reportedly voted for Moore in the special election, told the New York Times he has seen no evidence of electoral fraud and has no plans to delay the certification process. Moore’s loss, by a margin of over 20,000 votes, was not enough to trigger an automatic recount.
Shortly after news of Moore’s complaint broke, Merrill said in an interview with CNN that he will not delay certification of Jones’ win over the complaint.
In addition to the allegations of voter fraud, Moore’s statement said his complaint also contained “an affidavit from Judge Roy Moore stating that he successfully completed a polygraph test confirming the representations of misconduct made against him during the campaign are completely false.”
Because, who are you gonna trust? Multiple, unrelated women, each with highly detailed allegations that highlight a pattern of persistent sexual misconduct or a self-sworn statement from a disgraced former official, based entirely on a highly unreliable metric? Just go away already.