Posted on 07/01/2014 8:56:03 AM PDT by Oldpuppymax
Where my question is that it’s at the point where we should work AGAINST Cochran and anyone who supports him or was complicit in this outrage. A US Senate with a smaller minority of Republicans, but overwhelmingly conservative is a much better result than a majority dominated by the backstabbers. Look how many times they worked against the HOR conservatives in the past few years.
That is my understanding. Would love to be wrong about it but if I were a Mississippi voter I’d be looking for clarification. Cochran must go down and go down hard. Whatever accomplishes that goal is fair game to me.
Federal rulings support both his filing as an independent and campaigning as a write-in.
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Are you saying all the ‘sore loser’ laws in some of the states are invalid?
I agree. Whatever brings down Cochran is fair game. Supporting him is supporting theft as far as I’m concerned.
Well, then this is great news!
No wonder the GOPe honchos are laying low!
Are you saying all the ‘sore loser’ laws in some of the states are invalid?
The website is correct but not complete in the underlying detail.
First, MS does allow for write-ins but only on a restricted basis. On the ballot there is a block for a write-in but it does not need to be counted if the name on it comes under the restrictions set forth by the state law.
Second, federal courts including the US Supreme Court have ruled that banning write-ins for President are legal “as long as all the other laws of the election process are constitutional”. Now there is also always an implicit provision for violation of law. In other words if the law has been subverted, will a candidate with “unclean hands” be allowed to advance because their opponent is excluded by any means of restriction according to state law. The federal courts say of course not. They will issue a federal injunction against a state very quickly as long as solid evidence and support is presented to support overruling the state restrictions.
In other words, the state election laws don’t matter much to the federal courts save for proper decorum. They will evaluate on a case by case basis what is appropriate for a particular federal office election. State office elections are usually not reviewed by federal courts unless there is clear violation of federal law for example discrimination, vote buying or election tampering.
Yeah, I just wish there was a way to make it patently obvious that ticked off Conservatives were responsible.
Having Childers win by (say) 10,000 votes and having 50,000 or 100,000 or some other very large number marked with an invalid write in for McDaniels would be an excellent message. But it’s not worth spoling down-ballot candidates.
I saw an article today that said Cochran support among conservatives was very low (not surprising).
There’s only one way, really, to show the base’s fury, and that’s to take it public. Very public. And when a solution is found regarding Cochran, to get conservatives behind it so the message is crystal clear.
I’m guessing but don’t know that most of these laws would be applicable but
subject to a court challenge. JMO and I’m nowhere near a legal scholar.
MS has stated that a write-in line is provided on the ballots for use in case
a write-in is permitted under their laws. Example death of a legal candidate among others.
In any case MS has many other challenges to address before we get to that situation.
They can be overcome is what I am saying.
And they can be overcome quickly by filing for a restraining order and seeking a federal injunction for relief. The hearing can be held within 2 weeks of filing and the state must make a “state compelling interest” in response. MS has no compelling interest other than to protect Cochran.
Usually state compelling interests are made on the basis of opening the election to too many non-serious candidates creating confusion among the electorate; candidates like “Daffy Duck” or a party calling itself “Jihad for Islam”, etc.; it provides for the election process to be orderly and manageable.
But in this case there are hundreds of thousands of voters who would be disenfranchised if MS denied their votes. So the Sore Loser laws in this case won’t fly in federal courts.
It’s ruled on a case-by-case basis and all the cases you can find like independent presidential candidate John Andersen were able to overcome all the restrictions posed by states.
When it’s a serious candidate for a federal office, federal courts will overrule any restrictions at the state level.
And the federal injunction issued and ordered on MS will allow the McDaniel campaign to go forward.
But like I said it very likely won’t be necessary as the McDaniel campaign and support volunteers are doing a great job at getting all the fraud exposed. I will bet they get the runoff results overturned. I also think it’s a good possibility that Cochran will concede, why? Because the vote buying scandal could get him kicked out of Congress altogether and lead to others in the GOPe. We will see.
Hostage, your understanding probably needs its own thread: I myself have been claiming that no write-in is possible on threads, and if I’m wrong - a lot of us are under that impression - this is a fundamental mis-understanding about this race.
Let’s first let the current challenge unfold. It is progressing very nicely and can have a huge, I mean HUGE impact.
The only way I see McDaniel filing as an independent (after the deadline) or as a write-in, both options available only after a federal injunction is issued, is if the state GOP plays dirty with his access to the data of the runoff and they certify the results for Cochran and a state court refuses to hear McDaniel. THEN he can go to federal court and get back on the ballot through a federal injunction.
We have a long way to go before we need to think of these things. The only reason I started to discuss it is because I saw a news excerpt quoting McDaniel’s campaign manager the day following the runoff saying that a write-in would definitely be considered if a challenge to the ballots failed. So this is definitely a back burner issue.
and lead to others in the GOPe.
Is that why it took Johnson to break this? Nobody else is comfortable with launching the fatal missile against the GOPe?
If it’s going to happen it’s best to get it over with now and not let it fester.
The GOP can recover in time for taking control of the Senate in November as the Tea Party Republicans will be seen as the most trustworthy force in American politics today.
This McDaniel activity is so important! So much hinges on it. It is the GOPe’s Waterloo. The MSM has pronounced it is over, but the battle wages on intensely behind the scenes. Conservatives can emerge back on the national stage just as they did in 1994. Few voters today support democrats and even fewer will support GOPe candidates after this scandal blows up in their face. The only credible force left will be Tea Party conservatives. Did you see the urban black uprising in Detroit against Sharpton? Did you see them say they should consider following the Tea Party? It’s like that everywhere! People are so fed up, people from every political persuasion. When they see that the Tea Party is not racist, is not a white man’s club, is not conducting a war on woman; is for individual rights, preservation of constitutional freedoms, AND CAN BE TRUSTED, then we win.
Have you read about what the MS state election director did?
OK. I'll bite. What did he do?
Maybe, but please expound! Thank you for all of your info today!
A note from your post that I find interesting.
In the 2008 general there were just over 1.2 million votes. In the 2010 general
with Wicker there were over 1.2 million votes. But both the combined primaries, D&R,
had about 1/2 of that total. Lots of more voters turn out for the general than do the
primary. I’m sure that is true in most states but it’s interesting to see the difference.
It’s a she. She is Connie Cochran, the sister-in-law of Thad Cochran and she just happens to be the election commissioner for Hinds County and Perry County, two counties that are at the heart of the scandal.
It’s a long read but very worth it. It was published last Friday by Matthew Boyle in Breitbart News and somehow got on the short attention span of FR maybe because it is so long and involved. But it is chock loaded with information on the ground. And it’s a different level of scandal, one that explains how all the illegal votes were allowed in the first place. We’ve heard of the illegal vote buying, but the followup question is how many of bought votes were there and if they were not eligible to vote, how in hell did they get counted. How they got counted is answered by this piece in Breitbart News:
It’s important to grasp what it means when they say there was a failure to ‘switch the books’. Here I include a pertinent section which is still long:
In an interview with Breitbart News on Thursday, McInnis—the Hinds County Democrats’ top official—said that Perry asked Democrats to help him “break the law” by working together to accept Democratic voters who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary and in Tuesday’s GOP runoff.
Charging that Perry “has never ran a legal election in this state” because “he was never qualified by the Secretary of State’s office,” McInnis alleged that Perry asked him and county Democrats not to share records of who voted in each primary on June 3. The practice—called “switching the books”—is where, heading into a runoff, Democrats and Republicans swap poll books that list which voters voted in the respective parties’ recent primaries.
To start a primary, since Mississippi doesn’t technically have party registration, Democrats and Republicans each begin with their own lists of all registered voters. As voters cast ballots, poll workers write “VOTED” next to the names of people who vote in their primaries. If the process heads to a runoff in either or both parties’ primaries, the Democrats switch their books with Republicans and vice versa so poll workers in the runoffs can ensure nobody who voted in the Democratic primary votes in the GOP runoff and vice versa.
“The Democrats get the Republican book and the Republicans get the Democrat book to protect against crossover voting,” McInnis said. “In Mississippi and a lot of other states, if you voted in the Republican primary, you must only vote in the Republican runoff; you can’t switch.”
McInnis alleged in an interview with Breitbart News that Connie Cochran, Sen. Cochran’s sister-in-law and the Perry and Hinds County election commissioner, asked local Democrats not to switch the poll books.
“In the state of Mississippi, you have to take steps to prevent crossover voting,” McInnis said. “If you voted Democrat in the Democratic primary, you can’t vote in the Republican runoff. The way we protect that is we switch the poll books. Pete Perry and Connie Cochran, who’s the chair of the election commission, called us and asked us not to switch the books—which is a clear violation of the law.”
McInnis told Breitbart News he personally witnessed at least one Hinds County precinct—Precinct 16—where the books had not been switched during the runoff day. “I went out to a precinct to make sure the laws were being followed, and I got there at about 4 o’clock p.m.,” McInnis said. “They had not switched the books, under the influence of the young Republican and Democratic workers there. I demanded that they switch these books immediately. The Democratic poll manager there switched the books at 4 o’clock that evening.”
McInnis said he thinks Perry engaged in this practice throughout the entire county, but he can’t be sure because Democrats were only allowed inside 15 of the county’s 109 precincts on election day. Two Democrat candidates for the U.S. House third congressional district in Mississippi headed to a runoff, and while Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) represents most of Hinds County, the third congressional district has 15 precincts inside Hinds County.
“I think this was county-wide, but we only had 15 precincts because we only had a small runoff in a very small part of the county; we only had 15 precincts in the eastern part of the county,” McInnis said. “The rest of the county had only the Republican runoff, so we had no authority to go to Republican polling places and do anything about it. But in the places we could, we did—because we did not want to be accused of anything with the Republican Party.”
When asked how Perry could have succeeded in not switching the books—since he and other Democrats refused to cooperate with his request on the grounds that they believed it was illegal—McInnis replied that he worked with Sen. Cochran’s sister-in-law—the election commissioner in Hinds County—to get the job done. “Connie Cochran is the election commissioner,” McInnis said.
“I can’t tell you if he did this at all the precincts, but I can tell you at the precincts I went to, they didn’t switch the books. I know one woman at one precinct where she had voted in the Democratic primary, but she also was allowed to vote in the Republican runoff. It happened at more than one precinct.”
McInnis and his fellow Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee member, Chairwoman Jacqueline Amos-Norris, provided Breitbart News with email evidence that Perry and Connie Cochran were trying to not “switch the books” on runoff day. “Connie, unless I send you something in writing, it does not exist,” Norris wrote to Connie Cochran in the email dated June 18, six days before the runoff. “Claude informed me of what Pete said to you about the Poll Books and that’s not true and not legal. If I need to come down, please let me know.”
What supposedly happened, according to McInnis and Norris, is that Perry told Connie Cochran that McInnis agreed to not switch the books. McInnis and Norris both said that isn’t and wasn’t true, which was why Norris sent that email to Connie Cochran to inform her that it was not true.
“She stated that she told him it wasn’t going to happen, and that was the end of it,” Norris told Breitbart News.
Before this email exchange and this interview with McInnis was published, Perry told local news outlet MS News Now that he did switch the books. “It’s the easiest way for a poll worker to be able to look and see,” explained Perry. “Instead of printing out a list that you’ve got to work from the list, when I look up your name I can look right there and tell if you voted in the Democratic primary.”
In his statement, Perry reiterated that Hinds County had switched the poll books:
To help prevent mistakes, the Republican and Democrat parties switch the poll books for each precinct for a run-off. Since we don’t register by political party in Mississippi, the poll books list all voters. The theory of switching the poll books is that if a Republican poll worker is using the book that was used by the Democrats in the first election, then when a voter comes to vote in the Republican run-off, the poll worker can quickly see if the voter’s name is checked as having voted in the first Democrat primary.
Cole, the state Democrats’ chairman, said it really wasn’t the end of it because Perry somehow managed not to switch the books in several precincts across the county. “We have no way of knowing how many it happened at because we didn’t have the authority to go into most of the precincts in Hinds County,” Cole said, noting that because of the fact that the third congressional district was happening in just 15 Hinds County precincts, the Democrats only saw what happened there.
Cole also said that he thinks not switching the books could “absolutely” have happened in scores of Mississippi’s 82 counties and more than 1,800 precincts. “This process had to be honored in every precinct in Mississippi, all more than 1,800 precincts”:
If I were doing the inquiry into this election, I would want to compare the June 3 Democratic poll books in every precinct with the June 24 Republican poll books in every precinct. That’s the only way to know whether there was any crossover or not. None of this is done electronically. This is all on paper. We don’t have electronic poll books yet in any county in Mississippi. So if any Republican runoff poll workers either didn’t have the Democratic poll books from June 3, or didn’t use the Democratic poll books from June 3, there would have been no way for them to have known whether a voter voted in the first Democratic primary or not.
McInnis also alleged that Perry personally illicitly decided which absentee ballots in Hinds County would be allowed and which ones would not: “This is a thing that’s supposed to happen at the precincts. But we watched him decide which absentees would be voted and which absentees were not going to be voted. He also decided which affidavits would be voted and which ones would not. We watched him do that. We watched them break the law.”
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