https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Siegelman#2002_election_controversy
Representative Bob Riley defeated Siegelman in his November 2002 reelection bid by the narrowest margin in Alabama history: approximately 3,000 votes.
On the night of the election, Siegelman was initially declared the winner by the Associated Press. Later, a voting machine malfunction in Baldwin County was claimed to have produced the votes needed to give Riley the election.
Democratic Party officials objected, stating that the recount had been performed by local Republican election officials after Democratic observers had left the site of the vote counting. This rendered verification of the recount results impossible. The state's Attorney General, Republican Bill Pryor, affirmed the recounted vote totals, securing Riley's election. Pryor denied requests for a manual recount of the disputed vote; he warned that opening the sealed votes to recount them would be held a criminal offense.[13]
Analysts said that perhaps the most objective observation about this purported vote shift was that there was no corresponding vote shift in other issues and candidates on these same ballots, a shift that would be expected if they were anti-Siegelman voters. Largely as a result of this obvious inconsistency, the Alabama Legislature amended the election code to provide for automatic, supervised recounts in close races
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