Sore loser: Roy Moore files last-minute lawsuit to block Alabama Senate result

The GOP Alabama Senate candidate claims his loss to Democrat Doug Jones was due to rampant voter fraud

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published December 28, 2017 8:36AM (EST)

Roy Moore; Doug Jones (Getty/Salon)
Roy Moore; Doug Jones (Getty/Salon)

UPDATE: Alabama has certified that Doug Jones was the winner of the 2017 special election.

Roy Moore, the defeated Republican candidate in the 2017 Alabama Senate election, is filing a lawsuit to block the results.

Moore's lawsuit was filed roughly 14 hours before the state canvassing board is expected to officially certify Democrat Doug Jones as the election's winner, according to the Associated Press. The lawsuit claims that there was enough voter fraud in the Alabama Senate election to account for the margin of victory separating Jones from Moore, according to NPR. It specifically pointed to Jefferson County, an area in which turnout was higher than expected and in which Moore's lawyers claim the Republican's results were suspiciously low.

Ultimately, the difference between Jones and Moore amounted to more than 20,000 votes, with Jones winning 49.9 percent of the vote and Moore winning 48.4 percent of the vote.

"It is not going to delay certification and Doug Jones will be certified (Thursday) at 1 p.m. and he will be sworn in by Vice President Pence on the third of January," Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill told the AP on Wednesday. Notably, Merrill, a Republican, has sought to prosecute "hundreds" of Democrats he alleged illegally voted in the Republican Senate primary Moore won.

Moore made it clear that he would not concede the election, as soon as his defeat to Jones became clear earlier this month.

"In this race, we have not received the final count to include military and provisional ballots. This has been a very close race, and we are awaiting certification by the secretary of state," Moore declared in a video released at the time.

Although running for the Senate in a heavily Republican state, Moore's campaign was derailed by multiple accusations of sexual misconduct made against him by women who would have been teenagers at the time the alleged incidents occurred. Moore had been in his 30s.


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Alabama Senate Election 2017 Doug Jones Roy Moore Sexual Misconduct Voter Fraud Myth