During an interview on CNN on Tuesday, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R) stated that he believes it is “highly unlikely” that the results of the Alabama Senate election will change to be anything other than Democrat Doug Jones winning.
Anchor Jake Tapper asked, “Do you expect to certify the vote? Do you essentially expect that barring some shocking development, do you expect anything other than Mr. Jones being the next senator from the state of Alabama?”
Merrill answered, “I would find that highly unlikely to occur.” He cited the 2010 recount, where “the actual total didn’t change more than three or four votes, when all of the ballots were run back through the machine, after that was requested and paid for by the unsuccessful candidate. One of the things that is obviously recognized by using the equipment that we use in the elections process is that there’s not a whole lot of mistakes that are made. There’s not a whole lot of errors that occur. Because there’s a proper completing of the ballot and a way to feed the ballot into the machine, and then a way for the ballot to be tallied and each one of those votes to be recorded, documented, and reported to the central location there in the county, and then to us here in Montgomery.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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