The McDaniel Challenge May Have Merit
There may be something to McDaniel’s election challenge. I say: there may be.
The stats wizards at FiveThirtyEight say that unusually high black turnout did indeed, as suspected, help Cochran win. Counties that always go Democrat had massive numbers of voters going for Cochran in the Republican primary. Your initial reaction might be the same as mine was: isn’t that what happens when you have open primaries? After all, Rush Limbaugh famously encouraged Republicans to throw a monkey wrench into the works in 2008, and go vote for Hillary, just to undermine Obama and create more drama in the Democrat presidential primary process. Rush called the proposal “Operation Chaos.”
There are two differences between that and the Cochran situation: one moral and one potentially legal.
Limbaugh himself points out the moral issue: Establishment Republicans helped with this. Calling this a “Reverse Operation Chaos” is not accurate, because there is no evidence that Hillary helped Rush in 2008. But Republicans were behind the get-out-the-black-Democrat vote effort in this primary.
Charles C. Johnson has been leading the charge on this. He posts a picture of a flyer smearing McDaniel as a racist:
Here's the racist McDaniel hates black people mailer in entirety. Note illegal lack of disclosure. #cochran #mssen pic.twitter.com/uZcrMsj9oi
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 25, 2014
Here is a robocall where you can hear the race-based appeal:
OK, what about the legal aspect? Well, the Mississippi statute does allow open primaries . . . but it also limits participation in a party’s primary to people who intend to vote for the party’s candidate. The relevant Mississippi statute says:
No person shall be eligible to participate in any primary election unless he intends to support the nominations made in the primary in which he participates.
Now. I think you’d have some trouble enforcing that when it comes to the actions of an individual voter. What are you going to do: have elections officials quiz them about who they voted for, and who they intend to vote for in the general election? It seems to me that a court would put the kibosh on that kind of intrusion into the voters’ deliberative process.
But . . . it certainly would seem to show an intent to violate the law if a candidate or his supporters were to market their political message explicitly towards people intending to vote Democrat in the general election. Take another look at that flier above. See the bit at the bottom? Let me quote that for you:
MS law is clear. Anyone who did not vote in the June 3rd Democratic primary may vote in this Senate Run-off on Tuesday, June 24. If anyone asks you who you are voting for now or in November, tell them it’s a secret ballot and you don’t have to answer them.
That’s not what the statute says. You can’t vote if you don’t intend to support the nominations made in the party in which you participate.
This seems like an attempt to persuade people to vote who are not eligible — and to cover it up.
I still don’t see how a judge can throw out any votes based on a suspicion — however correct — that the voter intends to vote for the other party in the general election. But if they already voted in the Democrat election, that’s a different matter entirely.
This is a random claim on the Internet and I can’t trust it for that reason, but there may be something to it:
Hey, here's another example of voter fraud in #mssen. pic.twitter.com/scqNfzPPoq
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 26, 2014
If people voted in the Democrat primary and then voted again in the Republican primary, I think the process will be able to catch that. Those votes should be thrown out. Whether that’s enough to turn the tide for McDaniel, I don’t know. I suspect it’s not.
Ultimately, there may be no way to reverse the results of this election.
The real issue is: who is responsible?
Chuck Johnson says he has the goods to show that establishment Republicans were behind this:
Friends I have the smoking gun that shows Haley Barbour & his Super PAC was behind racist anti-McDaniel material. It's coming… #mssen
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 25, 2014
He’s also told me I can break the news here, tomorrow.
So stay tuned.