It has to be 7,000 or less difference to start a re-count. Right now it's 21,000.

[lindysalsagal]

So, will there be 13,000 military votes all for Moore? Does Alabama have that many deployed military?

Kornacki (MSNBC) says, there won't be enough. I agree.

[lunasun]

1. He can not even be a decent loser .......

Hope they don't pull any crap but the whole country is watching this one plus the majority of military votes may come in Jones they can't say unless they are altering them already

[wishstar]

2. Alabama Sec of State on CNN said absentee ballots already counted, and not that many military left

There will be no recount unless Moore pays for it and a recount would occur very quickly. Sec of State said their voting accuracy is historically extremely good, so recount would be prompt and not delay certification of Jones by Jan 3.

[TheBlackAdder]

3. When do they start purging the voting machine data, since it can't be kept.

[jmowreader]

4. No, they do not

According to http://www.governing.com/gov-data/military-civilian-active-duty-employee-workforce-numbers-by-state.html, there are a total of 8.732 active duty servicemembers from Alabama: 4,585 Army, 113 Navy, 160 Marines, 3,028 Air Force and 846 Coast Guard. The government says 45 percent of all active duty members are married, so there are potentially 12,662 military-affiliated votes from Alabama. (Spouses follow the same voting laws as active duty members.)

There are four major military bases in Alabama: Anniston Army Depot, Fort Rucker, Redstone Arsenal, and Maxwell Air Force Base. An Alabama citizen stationed at any one of those bases is not considered an "absentee voter" for this election; they can simply go to a polling place in the state and cast their ballot. These are not huge bases, but let's go ahead and give a quarter of the total Alabama soldiery to them. We're down to roughly 9500 potential ballots.

According to https://www.fvap.gov/alabama, the soldiers' ballots had to be postmarked today and received by December 19.

Even if every single Alabama-resident military member and every single spouse who is not stationed within Alabama casts a vote for Roy Moore, there's no way in hell he flips this race if the spread is 21,000 votes.

The GOP has three huge problems right now.

The first problem is tactical: The balance of power in the Senate before tonight was 52-48, and one of the 52 was Sessions. There are several Republican senators who are getting pretty damn sick of the shit the Trump-McConnell Mafia are pulling. At the very least they are going to have to think of a way to keep the more moderate senators, like Susan Collins and, surprisingly enough, John McCain from voting with the Democrats. At worst they are going to have to convince those senators not to become Democrats.

The second problem: Doug Jones just put both houses of Congress in play.

And third, how do they defend Trump if Congress starts turning against him?