Judge orders Alabama not to destroy voting records in Tuesday's Senate election

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Judge orders Alabama not to destroy voting records in Tuesday's Senate election

Updated 3:44 PM; Posted 3:42 PM

By Connor Sheets [e-mail]

A judge directed Alabama election officials Monday afternoon to preserve all digital ballot images in Tuesday's hotly contested U.S. Senate special election.

An order granting a preliminary injunction was filed at 1:36 p.m. Monday - less than 24 hours before voting is to begin. The order came in response to a lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of four Alabama voters who argued that the state is required to maintain the images under state and federal law.

"All counties employing digital ballot scanners in the Dec. 12, 2017 election are hereby ordered to set their voting machines to save all processed images in order to preserve all digital ballot images," Montgomery County Circuit Judge Roman Ashley Shaul wrote in the order.

Priscilla Duncan, attorney for the plaintiffs, applauded the order. .... Reached by phone shortly after the injunction was issued Monday, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill declined to comment. Merrill and Ed Packard, the state administrator of elections, are the two defendants named in the suit filed Thursday. ... "We don't comment on lawsuits," Merrill said.

[Roland99]

1. How is that not S. O. P. ???

[Xipe Totec]

2. Would that it were so simple

[dragonlady]

4. What is Alabama's history of compliance with voting rights?

Better to be on the safe side, hoping they will at least obey a court order.

[3catwoman3]

3. That anyone should have to be ordered...

...not to destroy voting records shouldn't even be "a thing." How pitiful that it is.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. In final-hour order, court rules that Alabama can destroy digital voting records after all

In final-hour order, court rules that Alabama can destroy digital voting records after all

Updated 11:29 AM; Posted 11:22 AM

By Connor Sheets [e-mail]

Alabama is allowed to destroy digital voting records created at the polls during today's U.S. Senate election after all.

At 1:36 p.m. Monday, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge issued an order directing Alabama election officials to preserve all digital ballot images created at polling places across the state today.

But at 4:32 p.m. Monday, attorneys for Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill and Ed Packard, the state administrator of elections, filed an "emergency motion to stay" that order, which the state Supreme Court granted minutes after Merrill and Packard's motion was filed.

By granting the stay, the court effectively told the state that it does not in fact have to preserve the digital ballot images - essentially digitized versions of the paper ballots voters fill out at the voting booth - created today.