The Roy Moore for Senate campaign sent a letter to Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill asking him to investigate potential vote fraud in the upcoming special election to replace U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, who resigned from office to accept his appointment as U.S. attorney general in the Trump administration.
The immediate issue at hand is official sample ballots that were reportedly already marked as votes for Democratic candidate Doug Jones. The letter to the secretary of state said:
I am deeply disturbed by evidence from Bullock County that official sample ballots for next week’s Special Election for United States Senator have been observed in the Probate Judge’s office that were marked for Democrat candidate Doug Jones.
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The letter from the Moore campaign continued, requesting a full investigation of this security breach and also specifically stating:
First, please request the Probate Judges across Alabama to inspect the election materials currently in their possession—including but not limited to official sample ballots—for signs of tampering or other mischief. Second, please issue guidance to the election officials in each county on appropriate security protocols leading up to next week’s election.
Finally, please request the election officials to permit one authorized representative of each candidate in the special election to appear and—in the presence of the election officials —inspect the sample ballots, so that we can be assured that what happened in Bullock County was an isolated incident, and not part of a broader plot to steal this election.
Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has responded to the first of Moore’s concerns by asking Bullock County Probate Judge James Tatum to check the sample ballots. Tatum found approximately 10 to 15 of the sample ballots had been marked for Doug Jones. He removed the marked ballots from the stack and properly disposed of them.
Secretary Merrill said the secretary of state’s office would send guidance to all the state’s probate judges requesting they also check their sample ballot supplies to verify there was not a widespread issue.
The New American contacted the Alabama secretary of state’s office regarding Roy Moore’s second and third requests. As of press time, they had not yet responded.
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