I loved the movie Forrest Gump, I had read the book, but I always wondered what that line 'Mama always said stupid is as stupid does' really meant.
In the aftermath of this special senate race between Roy Moore and Doug Jones, I think I've learned what Forrest was really talking about.
Here we are well over a week after the voters of Alabama voted to send Democrat Doug Jones to Washington to represent us and Republican Roy Moore has yet to concede. Stupid No. 1 on Moore.
He was holding out on some hope that some 21,000 military and overseas votes, write-ins and provisional ballots would make a difference. Final totals aren't in but it didn't happen. In Escambia County we had four provisional ballots counted. Moore got two, Jones got two for a wash. No late overseas or military absentee ballots came in.
Stupid No. 2 is the order by Secretary of State John Merrill ordering the election officials in each county to count the write-in votes. I'm not blaming Merrill, I'm blaming the law that created this mess.
Apparently, the state law says that write-ins must be counted if there are more write-ins than the difference between the top two finishers. Granted, Jones (unofficially) won by 20,715 votes and there were a reported 22,780 write-in votes cast.
Who made this stupid law? I assume the Alabama Legislature passed this law but it needs to be addressed.
Jones received 671,151 votes. Common sense tells me that if there weren't 671,152 write-in votes cast the end result would be the same. Does anybody (possibly Stupid No. 3) really think that anybody would write-in Jones or Moore since their names were already on the ballot?
The law needs to read that if the number of write-in votes is more than the winner, that's when they will be counted.
I did have someone tell me that I've written here before that every vote counts. I agree with that. I always vote.
But I watched as our probate judge, circuit clerk and staff sifted through more than 8,000 paper ballots to pull out write-ins that included everybody from Lee Busby, who mounted the only write-in campaign, to Donald Duck. They searched through those ballots to find the 87 write-ins and count them.
They did so with staff on hand. But I wonder what happened in Jefferson County. Reports show there were 215,831 votes cast and somebody had to go through all those ballots to find 3,710 write-ins that probably included some Lee Busbys a few more Donald Ducks, maybe a Mickey Mouse or two and some Luther Strange votes.
My bet is those big counties either had to pay overtime, bring in new help or keep their elected officials away from their day-to-day job to count those votes.
My problem with Moore and the reason I didn't vote for him had nothing to do with the sexual allegations. It had everything to do with him ignoring the law while he was chief justice of the supreme court. I've said before that instead of ignoring the law, people need to work to correct it.
The Alabama Legislature needs to address the threshold of counting write-ins. Get the law changed.
Stupid No. 4 may be the claims by many Republicans that Gov. Kay Ivey cost the Republicans the election. What cost the Republicans the election was putting a man like Moore on the ballot. They wanted him, they nominated him. The Republican Party has nobody to blame but themselves.
Give credit to Jones and the Democrats. They saw the weak link in the Republican chain and they attacked it. That's politics 101.
Stupid is as stupid does.
