A picture of democracy

Roy Moore tried and failed to challenge the outcome of the U.S. Senate special election where he was bested by Democrat Doug Jones. We are grateful that Alabamians rejected Republican Moore, with his bigoted views and documented history of attempts to seduce teen girls, won’t be in the Senate. But count us disappointed that Moore’s ex-colleagues on the Alabama Supreme Court denied him fair opportunity to prove his cockamamie claim that rampant voter fraud denied him so many votes that he should have beaten Jones instead of losing by around 22,000 votes.

It was they, after all, who overturned a lower court ruling ordering Alabama to save scanned images of every vote cast in the Senate race. Had the scans survived, Moore — and anyone else — would have been able to examine the digital images of the ballots cast and search to his heart’s content for missed votes and other irregularities. Making public the digital images preserves voter privacy, protects the integrity of original paper ballots and allows for certainty in any challenge. Sorry, Roy. Meanwhile, ballot images are playing a pivotal role in deciding a tied election for the Virginia legislature’s lower house, which will determine partisan control of the chamber.

Election officials examined digital ballot images, but only where the scanners detected no valid vote or an invalid double vote. The contest was to be resolved by a random lot. Heavens why?

Now that the Democratic candidate has sought court intervention, consider the fairest and most transparent way to proceed: release all the ballot images and let the two sides hunt for ballots to bolster their cause.