True The Vote Sues Mississippi GOP

Doug Ross

BOOM: True The Vote Sues Mississippi GOP — and by Extension, the GOP Establishment — Over Vote Fraud

True the Vote, the citizens initiative pursuing “free and fair elections for all Americans,” and 13 other plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Mississippi Secretary of State and the Republican Party of Mississippi over the June 24 primary election runoff in which Sen. Thad Cochran edged tea-party challenger Chris McDaniel.

The lawsuit asks the court to grant immediate access to voting records to inspect for possible illegal voting. It asserts that “defendants failed to properly abide by federal election record maintenance and open records provisions codified in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). Records made partially available to the plaintiffs indicated ‘double-voting’ from Democratic to Republican primaries – potentially diluting votes in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.”

The complaint explains that the National Voter Registration Act supersedes Mississippi law.

“All we are asking is that the Mississippi State Republican Party follow the law; allow their designated county representatives to inspect the poll books and ballots, give them the review time they are permitted by law, and allow them to uphold their responsibility to Mississippi voters … True the Vote has been inundated with reports from voters across Mississippi who are outraged to see the integrity of this election being undermined so that politicos can get back to business as usual. Enough is enough,” said True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht.

McDaniel won the June 3 state GOP primary with a margin too small (about 1,500 votes) to avoid a runoff. Cochran won the runoff with 7,000 votes, allegedly by convincing thousands of black Democrats to cross over and vote for him in the runoff.

One campaign flyer in particular claimed McDaniel intended to prevent blacks from voting. A radio announcement implied that McDaniel was going to defund welfare and urged blacks to vote for Cochran: “By not voting, you’re saying, ‘Take away all of my government programs, such as food stamps, early breakfast and lunch programs, millions of dollars to our black universities …’”

The McDaniel campaign has been considering a legal challenge since the day of the runoff. McDaniel alleges that Democrats made thousands of illegal crossover votes in the runoff, having already voted in the Democratic primary. Two days after the runoff, he reported having found over 1,000 votes in Hinds County alone – the state capital seat – in which voters allegedly voted in the Democrat primary, then crossed over to vote in the GOP runoff.

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