Election results in Adamsville were brief.

Mayor Pam Palmer beat Christopher Allen James like a second-hand bass drum to keep her grip on city hall. Incumbent Glenn Minyard doubled up on a challenger to keep his council seat, and Johnathan Charles Click got 61 percent of the vote -- it was only 73 votes -- to take a council seat.

None of the other seats were contested.

Simple, right? Just ho-hum election in a ho-hum town.

Nope. Because at least five other people in Adamsville in western Jefferson County set out to qualify to run for office. They went to the city clerk to file paperwork. They walked away believing they'd qualified to run, as guaranteed by the constitution, the spirit of fairness and the American Way.

And on the day after the qualifying deadline - a day after it was too late and the point was moot - they all got notes in the mail saying they'd been disqualified.

Oops. Sorry Charleys, you can stick all the campaign signs you bought where the sun don't shine. You can exercise your civic rights anytime you like, but you can't run here.

Just like in Autaugaville. Or Selma. Or Thorsby. Or Troy.

Candidates for office - including Yohance Owens, Dana Brown, Nathaniel Byrd, Loretta Herring and Tammi Taylor in Adamsville - were denied a chance to run for office because they - like 113 others who wanted to run across the state - failed to meet requirements to run.

At least 80 of them were booted off the ballot because they did not file their ethics reports simultaneous with qualifying to run, as required by a new state law.

Of course the thwarted candidates believe the game was rigged, that they were not told all they needed to know when they qualified. Officials with the Alabama Secretary of State's office acknowledge it looks a little fishy in Adamsville, but in the end the law is unfortunately clear.

It is incumbent on the candidate to know all the rules and the law of qualifying. And if they don't ...

Yohance Owens, Tammi Taylor and Nathaniel Byrd were among those denied qualification.

Tough.

Fair is fair. Even when it's not fair.

Nathaniel Byrd gets that. He's a preacher, en ex-military realist, and he blames himself as much as he blames the city. Adamsville could have easily sat candidates down to submit their ethics forms at the time of qualification, but they did not.

"They took advantage of the law," Byrd said. "On this I failed. I take just as much responsibility as the city. That's where I messed up."

But clearly there is a problem, he and other candidates said. Five candidates were disqualified for failing to file ethics forms simultaneously, and three others were disqualified for other reasons."

"Eight candidates had a problem," Byrd said. "That tells you we have a problem in Adamsville."

Adamsville City Clerk Janna Gardner insists all candidates were treated equally. She said she handed out a checklist to all candidates along with an election guide distributed by the League of Municipalities.

She says anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Owens said he got no checklist, and if she says otherwise she's lying.

He said, she said, and what are we doing here?

We find ourselves in a carnival of the absurd arguing about who's lying in the wake of another ill-conceived and poorly executed law that keeps people out of the political process in the name of transparency.

Sure, it is important for candidates to file statements of economic interest with the ethics commission. But there has to be a better way than kicking people off the ballot.

Like six candidates in Autaugaville. Booted. Like five candidates in Troy and Thorsby. Booted. Like five in Selma, the very cradle of the voting rights movement.

Gone.

Maybe the clusters are just coincidence. And maybe pigs fly out of your voting booth. Maybe these cities did just what they were required to do, and nothing more, with the legal plausible deniability handed them by this law.

But that doesn't make it right.

Byrd is philosophical about it.

"You can't go back and change it," Byrd said. "But it doesn't need to happen again."

Tom Albritton, executive director of the Alabama Ethics Commission, said his agency is considering an administrative order that would at least allow some leeway in deciding when disqualifications can be reversed. Adamsville's Gardner said she supports that.

That's a start. It may take a legislative finish.

This has to change. It does.

Alabama, known across the land for snubbing voter rights and civil rights and equal rights, can't make it easy for candidates to be denied a place on the ballot.

We have been down that road, and it is long. We've been in that place, and it is wrong.