Alabama’s Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, announced that investigators found no evidence of vote fraud in the state’s Dec. 12 special election and that Democrat Doug Jones is still the next Senator from Alabama.
As we reported last week, supporters of accused child molester Roy Moore claimed “voter fraud” after a video of an exuberant young man of color who supported Doug Jones went viral on conservative sites.
On election night in Alabama, Fox 10 News spoke to the young man who said: “We came here all the way from different parts of the country as part of our fellowship, and all of us pitched in to vote and canvas together, and we got our boy elected!”
Moore and his followers claimed that this amounted to an admission that people from other states were brought to Alabama to fraudulently vote for Jones, which echoes a popular right-wing trope about “illegal” voters of color being used to sway elections.
The news video and accompanying conspiracy theory went viral, spread by “satire” news sites and an army of Twitter bots before making headlines at Alex Jones’ InfoWars website.
But those claims were debunked by the Republican Secretary of State in Alabama:
“After additional research was conducted, it was determined that this young man has lived and worked in Alabama for more than one year and is currently a registered voter in this state,” said Merrill in a statement, according to The Washington Post. “We applaud this young man’s energy, excitement, and enthusiasm for the electoral process and we are always encouraged when we observe Alabamians who are actively engaged in campaigns and elections in our state.”
