Stealing The Vote - Alabama Edition (UPDATED)

Not content with the fact that their candidate is a serial sexual predator and child molester, Alabama Republicans are sinking ever lower, doing all they can to get Roy "Teen Spirit" Moore over the line in today's special election.

Led by their Republican Secretary of State John Merrill, Alabama has been using every method possible to suppress the votes of minority populations:

In recent years, Alabama Republicans have taken steps to protect their grip on power by making it harder for African Americans and Latinos to vote. They passed a law requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID, a measure that has been found to disproportionately disenfranchise African Americans and Latinos, who are more likely to lack such an ID and face impediments to getting one. The ID law also applied to absentee voting, which is used by many elderly black voters in rural counties, who now must mail in copies of their photo IDs with their ballots. (The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is challenging the law in federal court as intentionally discriminatory.) They reformed campaign finance laws to weaken the political organizations that mobilize African American voters. They closed 31 DMV offices across the state, disproportionately affecting rural majority-black counties. In every county in which African Americans made up more than 75 percent of registered voters, the local DMV was slated for closure. (After a federal civil rights investigation, Alabama agreed to increase DMV service in rural African American counties, partially reversing the closures.) Since the US Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, allowing states like Alabama to change voting procedures without federal approval, Alabama has closed about 200 voting precincts, creating longer lines and sowing confusion among voters.

So, what's their fail safe, last line of defense in case voter suppression isn't enough to elect Moore?  How about some post- voting ballot chicanery:

The Alabama Supreme Court stepped into Tuesday’s U.S. Senate race between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones on Monday night by blocking a lower state court’s ruling earlier in the day that ordered election officials to take steps to preserve digital images of every ballot cast Tuesday. 

In effect, the Alabama Supreme Court’s stay—or freezing—of an earlier court order to preserve the digital ballot images undermines the best-case scenario for ensuring that an accurate vote count can be verified in the controversial Senate race. 

Alabama’s Supreme Court, where Moore served as chief justice, did not issue an explanation with its stay. However, a lengthy brief filed at the close of business Monday by the state on behalf of Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill contained a list of eyebrow-raising assertions, such as Merrill had no authority to tell local election officials how to operate their voting machines. The state also said only private vendors holding contracts to program the machines could do so—and that it was too late for that.  (our emphasis)

The Alabama Supreme Court is an elected body and -- spoiler alert! -- all nine judges are Republican!  Well, gawww- leee!

We shouldn't be surprised if there are "irregularities" in the voting today. In Alabama, stealing the vote isn't a bug, it's a feature. It's the sort of rigged system, along with gerrymandering, that's keeping Republicans in power in state after state.  It's the same system authoritarian demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump's "voter suppression commission" led by the notorious vote suppressor Kris Kobach would want to see installed nationwide, with a complicit Republican- majority U.S. Supreme Court that has already undercut remedies to voting discrimination (specifically in Alabama) in Shelby County v Holder.

The stakes are going to be high in every election from now on. We'll see if Alabamians, and we, can overcome.

UPDATE:  The Republican white supremacists are pulling some nasty voter suppression based on real time reports.