Every news outlet, including CDN, called the Alabama special Senate election for Democrat Doug Jones Tuesday night, but Roy Moore (R) wasn’t ready to give up.
Long after Jones had made his acceptance speech and the networks had reported a Democratic party victory, Roy Moore finally emerged to tell his faithful that they should wait for a recount.
First, Moore partially quoted Psalm 40:1-3:
I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me, heard my cry, brought us out of a horrible pit out of clay and set me feet on the rock and established my goings and put a new song in our mouth. Praise to our God. Many shall see it and hear it and shall be moved by that, if you will.
“That’s what we’ve got to do,” Moore added, “is wait on God and let this process play out.”
It’s a slight misquote of the passage but it captures the meaning. Then Moore made his point more succinctly:
“When the vote is this close, it is not over,” Moore said.
What Mr. Moore is referring to is Alabama’s automatic recount rule. If the losing candidate is within .5% of the winner, a recount will be automatically triggered. At the time of his announcement he was almost 1% behind and after 100% of the vote is counted he was 1.5% out of the money. It’s unclear how he gets the vote into the recount threshold, but he’s clearly not giving up easily.
