JACKSON, Miss. – Thursday afternoon Mississippi Tea Party Leaders claimed there were over 800 voting irregularities in the June 24 Mississippi Republican runoff for Senate. Hinds County GOP chairman Pete Perry said Friday morning those claims were ridiculous.
Perry said more than 500 of Hinds County’s pole workers were trained not to allow people who voted in the Democratic primary vote in the republican runoff. He also said Republican poll books were switched out with Democratic poll books so poll workers would have a quick reference for who voted in the primary and who did not.
The McDaniel campaign claimed that at precinct 14 there were 192 “illegal votes” – people that they claim had voted in the Democrat primary but voted in the Republican runoff. Perry says that would be impossible because according to the certified results of the June 3 Democratic primary, there were only 37 total Democrat primary voters at that particular precinct.
Perry also said a large number of the “claimed irregularities” were instances where poll workers marked the wrong date and it was corrected by the poll manager using the correct procedure and initialed.
“Ms. Overscheld was aware of this and other similar instances when she made her statement yesterday. She had inflated her own numbers to make it appear worse than they had actually found. They had by their count somewhere of 772 instances in Hinds County. She said it was over 800. Later the candidate inflated the numbers again on national TV saying it was over a thousand votes in this county. Elections are about specifics not generalities,” said Perry.
