What is meant by “switching the books”?
During each primary every voter is recorded as taking either a Republican or Dem ballot. The info is kept in election books. During a run-off, a new set of books has to be kept, or it’s impossible to compare the original books with the second election. I.e.: unless you switch to a new set of books, you don’t have a valid record of both the original and the subsequent election.
“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.”
The dems kept track of who all got a dem ballot in the primary election and the reps kept track of who all got a rep ballot. There’s the dem book and the rep book. For the runoff the dems are supposed to give their book to the R’s so the poll workers could see who already voted in the dem primary, and the R’s are supposed to give their book to the D’s so the D’s could see who all already voted for the R’s. (There was one non-statewide D runoff also on Tuesday).
The chair of the R party, together with Cochran’s sister-in-law who is the elections commissioner for Hinds County, tried to get the D’s to agree not to trade books, which would mean that poll workers wouldn’t check which D’s were actually still eligible to vote in the R run-off. The D’s wouldn’t do it so the chair of the R party lied and said that they HAD agreed not to provide the D book for verification of voter eligibility. The D’s caught wind of it so they sent an email making sure it was known that they were NOT party to this cheating.
The D leader went to check at one polling place at 4pm and sure enough, the R’s were NOT using the D book to verify voter eligibility. The only places the D authorities were allowed to check out whether the books were switched like they were supposed to be were in the places where there was also this non-statewide D run-off, and they found in those places that the R chair and Cochran’s sister-in-law had gone ahead with the cheating even though the D’s hadn’t agreed to it. The R’s were NOT using the D book to check eligibility.
And they had previously had problems with absentee votes being fraudulent. In this instance, with this run-off, the chair of the R’s (who had arranged this run-off day fraud a week ahead of time) made all the decisions as to which absentee ballots they would count and which they would throw out - even though that was supposed to be done by the precincts.
So now there is question as to whether McDaniel actually won the primary by more than 50%, and the R chair had messed up the absentee ballots to make it close enough for a run-off.
Crooked, criminal behavior. If they’ve got the witnesses, this email where the D’s are refusing the plan to cheat should put both the R chair and Cochran’s sister-in-law in jail for deliberate, pre-planned election fraud.