Alabama Senate Race

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – The Latest on Alabama’s U.S. Senate election (all times local): 11:15 a.m. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he cast an absentee ballot in Tuesday’s special Senate election in Alabama but declined to specify his choice, saying he “valued the sanctity of the ballot.”

At a Tuesday news conference in Baltimore on gang violence and immigration, Sessions said Alabama residents are “good and decent and wonderful” people.

He said he’s confident they will make the right decision.

Alabama voters are deciding between Republican Roy Moore, former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and Democrat Doug Jones, a lawyer who prosecuted two Ku Klux Klansmen who killed four black girls in a 1963 church bombing.

Multiple women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct with teen girls when he was in his 30s.

Moore denies the accusations.

The winner of Tuesday’s election will take the seat previously held by Sessions.

UPDATED: 8:55 a.m. Democratic nominee Doug Jones was met by cheering supporters as he cast his ballot in Alabama’s U.S. Senate race.

Jones smiled and waved as he arrived at his voting precinct in the wealthy Birmingham suburb of Mountain Brook on Tuesday.

Poll workers at the church where he voted complained that so many news reporters were on hand that voters were having a hard time parking.

Jones says he feels good about the campaign he’s run and he doesn’t think Republican Roy Moore is going to win.

Jones said, “This is an important time in Alabama’s history, and we feel very confident where we are and how this is going to turn out.”

UPDATED: 8:25 a.m. Alabama’s top election official estimates that turnout for the hotly contested U.S. Senate election now underway will likely be around 18 to 20 percent of registered voters.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill tells The Associated Press there’s also a chance that turnout for the special election could be as high as 25 percent.

Voting places opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday and will remain open until 7 p.m.

Cool temperatures were common across Alabama when voting began and the state is expected to see dry weather all day during voting.

Republican Roy Moore faces Democrat Doug Jones in Tuesday’s election.

Multiple women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct with teenage girls when he was in his 30s.

Moore is now 70 and denies the charges.

UPDATED: 7:45 a.m. More than two dozen people stood in line in the chilly morning air at Legion Field, a predominantly black precinct in Birmingham, after polls opened at 7 a.m.

Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones have both reached out to minority voters during their contentious campaign for a U.S. Senate seat.

Political observers believe that Jones needs heavy turnout among African-American voters in order to win on Tuesday.

The Legion Field precinct is in a stadium office, where blue-tinted posters of local college football players and cheerleaders lined one of the walls.

About 20 Doug Jones campaign signs were planted in the ground near the parking lot where voters were driving in to vote.

There were no Roy Moore signs.