While I'm happy about who won, I am deeply troubled because

[diva77]

48. must account for the ugly fact that Alabama has voter id laws, plus there could have been

voter caging, etc. -- so it's very likely a much higher % tried to vote but were unable to...

http://sos.alabama.gov/alabama-votes/voter/voter-id

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Reports of Voter Suppression Tactics Pour In From Alabama Election
Voters in the contest between Roy Moore and Doug Jones complain of being put on inactive status and prevented from voting.

Pema LevyDec. 12, 2017 5:12 PM

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/reports-of-voter-suppression-tactics-pour-in-from-alabama-election/#

SNIP
Almost as soon as voting was underway on Tuesday, civil rights groups began receiving hundreds of complaints of voter suppression, and residents and reporters took to social media to report tactics used to intimidate minority voters or force them to cast provisional ballots.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law had received 235 calls to its voter hotline as of 3:24 p.m. The group aims to provide live assistance to voters, and it’s unclear how many of the calls were to report voting irregularities rather than simply asking for assistance. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has been collecting reports of voting problems in Alabama, some of them secondhand, including multiple reports of people being put on inactive status and erroneously prevented from voting.

“Some of these voters are told that they cannot vote,” Coty Montag, the director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wrote in a roundup on Tuesday afternoon. “Others are being given provisional ballots. The correct [procedure] is that voters who appear on the inactive list must be allowed an opportunity to re-identify and vote a regular ballot.”

The group also collected reports of very long lines at precincts where poll workers say they were unprepared for high turnout. Alabama’s secretary of state, Republican John Merrill, has repeatedly predicted low turnout in the special election. Election expert Michael McDonald of the University of Florida tweeted that it was “bordering on malpractice to give this guidance to local election officials who should prepare for higher turnout.” The group has also collected reports of people being prevented from voting by the state’s photo ID law because their IDs have expired.
SNIP