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On Election Day last year, I devoted my column to this country’s real voter fraud — not the vanishingly small number of people who try to vote illegally but the large number of American citizens who are kept from exercising their most basic democratic right.

The problem is serious in Alabama, the site of today’s special Senate election between the Republican Roy Moore and the Democrat Doug Jones. Thousands of Alabama residents are prohibited from voting or face unfair obstacles — and a disproportionate number of them are black.

Few elections are close enough for voting obstacles to be decisive, but the Alabama Senate race may be one of them. (Polls continue to differ widely, largely because it’s so unusual — featuring one candidate, Moore, who’s a proud bigot, an alleged molester and the nominee of the state’s dominant political party.)