JACKSON, Miss.–Your voting records, they are what state Sen. Chris McDaniel and his lawyers want access to prove there were illegal votes in the June 24 runoff election, where he lost to incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran for the Republican nomination to U.S. Senate. McDaniel and his attorneys filed for an emergency order Monday with the state Supreme Court.
Right now, McDaniel has access to voting records, but not specific information on who voted for who. That information has been blacked out, or redacted.
McDaniel’s team claims that under state law they have the right to see that info. Sec. of State Delbert Hosemann said he believes the law is clear and that information is private.
The request filed Monday is specifically for Harrison County, but if granted would likely apply to all circuit clerks.
This is the wording McDaniel’s lawyers used in the brief. It’s for an emergency court order:
A candidates right to a full examination of original election materials is an essential part of Mississippi’s statutory system of assuring election integrity.
The Public Records Act has no application to a candidate’s access to original documents authorized by the Mississippi Election Code.
McDaniel hopes to prove that there were enough illegal votes to have a court overturn the election results. Since the runoff, his campaign has worked to prove that thousands of people who voted Democrat in the June 3 primary, primarily African-Americans, voted Republican in the runoff.
That would be illegal, according to state law.
However, claims from the Cochran campaign and many election officials, like Pete Perry in Hinds County, where the McDaniel campaign spent time looking over the redacted records, are that there were very few voting irregularities.
Perry called a news conference for Tuesday morning at 10:30 to further discuss the Hinds County ballot examinations.
