The Alabama elections get ever more hilarious:
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.
The court will hold a hearing on Dec. 21 about whether to dismiss the case outright. By that point the state will have had ample time to destroy the digital ballot images legally under the stay.
Remember the Georgia special election? More about that case here.
Whatever the purported reasons for destroying election evidence might be, the real outcome from such acts will be our inability to trust that elections are fair. And that is terrible for democracy.