Washington Republicans Tried To Rig Alabama Election

Steven Rosenfeld

November 18, 2017 7:57 am

The strange saga of Roy Moore’s senatorial bid in Alabama has made one thing clear: Nobody should doubt that the GOP is the modern political party most eager to rig election results—even when the target is a fellow Republican.

Recent days have seen the best minds in the current generation of Republican strategists contorting election rules in every imaginable way to try to stop Moore from becoming Alabama’s junior U.S. senator next month.

Some of these exchanges have been chronicled on election law blogs, where for years, Republicans have defended their catalog of partisan voter suppression tactics (led by the big lie they were protecting the process from hordes of Democrats impersonating other voters, despite never offering serious proof). But now that an apparent sexual predator is refusing to exit the race, despite calls by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans, the party’s best and brightest have been exploring every possible angle, including canceling December’s special election.

Astoundingly, as of Thursday, the stop-Moore contingent has come up empty-handed. They have been thwarted by the calendar, Alabama’s sitting Republican governor and small details like the U.S. Constitution’s 17th Amendment (in part governing the election of senators after a vacancy). But how they tried!

http://www.nationalmemo.com/washington-republicans-trying-rig-alabama-election